The team at the Drumheller Resiliency and Flood Mitigation Office took advantage of the mild winter conditions to assess the Red Deer River and surrounding banks as part of their planning efforts.
On Thursday, February 20, a group from the office including Mayor Heather Colberg, geotechnical engineers, land surveyors, project managers, and water engineers toured the river. This will allow the team to plan for the mitigation projects in the short and long term.
“We have been doing an investigation and inventory of the existing dyking and we have to look where we are going to augment it and where we are going to put new dyking,” said Darwin Durnie, Chief Resiliency and Flood Mitigation Officer for the town.
Some of the mitigation work, he explains, will not have to be undertaken with major projects. Sometimes it has to do more with making room for the river.
He said, for example, across the river from Newcastle Beach erosion has occurred, and because the beach has not been maintained, the willows have grown. This has slowed the water down on the beach side, but sped it up on the north side, eroding the bank. A solution could be as simple as having an inmate crew come in and cut the brush on the beach, making more room for the river to naturally flow.
The team left from Newcastle Beach and toured from Nacmine, all the way to East Coulee. Durnie explains that assessing the terrain with a view from the river is optimal, and doing it in the winter gives them the ability to use all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles to traverse the water.
“Whether it is slope stability or erosion, it‘s way easier to assess it from the water and none of us like canoes,” chuckles Durnie.
