Three floods in eight years are too much for The Valley People Association. Members of the group comprising of farmers, acreage and small business owners met today in Saskatoon to voice their concern and present information about the operation of the Gardiner Dam.
At the meeting they discussed the South Saskatchewan River valley flooding in 2005, 2011 and 2013. They argued that recent flooding events downstream of the Gardiner Dam are man-made, and they discussed why it is happening and what needs to be done to fix the problem.
During the first 35 years of the dam and reservoir’s operation there were no floods. The standard operating plan for the dam and reservoir specified that flood control was the first operational priority and electrical power generation was a lesser priority. According to the group’s report those two points have reversed within the past ten years under the provincial government’s management.
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The recent floods could have been avoided if the dam was operated the way it was designed said Spencer Early, chair of the organization.Transparency by the dam’s administrators also top’s his list of complaints.
“They will tell you it’s an act of nature. We say it’s not because there’s a dam there that’s designed to deal with this and mitigate some of these problems. To continually mismanage the dam and cause many millions of dollars of stress, loss of livelihood and damage to homes and buildings downstream because of mismanagement is not acceptable,” he said.
“The new frequency doesn’t help. The fact that for years and years they never had to deal with this because we weren’t having the rainfalls and snowpack but it’s certainly within the design criteria,” he said.
“These (floods) are only one in a hundred year events. The fact that they’re happening close together is unfortunate. These people are failing to operate that thing (dam) safely at the one hundred year event. They’ve failed these little tests. What if the big event comes along that’s maybe a five hundred year thing, what in the world is going to happen then.”
