ST. JEAN BAPTISTE, Man. – To some, living in a low zone that may be flooded a metre deep would cause anxiety, fear and flight.
But to the folks working at the Roy Legumex head office, today’s just another day. And this week will probably be just another week.
“It’s just part of living here in St. Jean,” said purchasing and quality control manager Barney Baril.
“We’ve been through this before.”Roy Legumex and other farm-related businesses in this small French town are getting ready for a possible flood when the recent snow melts and flood water from the United States surges into their part of the Red River Valley.
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A Viterra fertilizer storage facility has been trucking out its stock just in case the town is flooded, although weather forecasts suggest that is an unlikely possibility.
The Roy Legumex staff expects to keep working out of St. Jean Baptiste, but they will be moved to rented office space if it appears likely the town will be cut off by flood waters.
“The office would have to move to Winnipeg,” Baril said.
“We have office space all lined up. We’ll keep operating, because we do export all over the world, and our system will just have to adjust.”
Across the road from the office is Roy Legumex’s main handling facility. If the town is cut off, that plant would cease operations.
Fortunately for the company, it owns other facilities in drier areas where work could be transferred. During the 1997 flood, the plant in St. Jean Baptiste was shut for three weeks.
The town sits behind a big earthen dike where Plum Creek empties into the larger Red River. Already the frozen Plum is a wide, flooded area outside the town, so it wouldn’t take much to push water onto nearby farmland if the recent snow melts quickly.
It’s a similar story up and down the river as farm families and small towns prepare for a possible flood.
On April 2, Manitoba water minister Christine Melnick toured threatened towns to see local preparations. She said she doubted any farm families would be flooded out.
“The communities have been very careful in watching their ring dikes,” Melnick said while visiting St. Adolphe.
Rural municipal official Bob Stefaniuk said there was more panic in 1997 because people didn’t know what to expect.
“People have been through this before, so they know what’s coming. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
All new residences built in the flood plain are now required to have ring dikes tall enough to withstand a flood two feet higher than the one in 1997.
Only a few signs of flood preparation were visible last week because most towns, farms and homes are now permanently prepared.
A few provincial crews were out along the highways, clearing blocked culverts. In the town, backhoes were busy clearing out runoff channels.
Earth moving machines have been preparing to block town entrances where there are gaps in the dikes, with clay soil if necessary.
Back at the Roy Legumex office, Baril is relaxed about the possibility of a flood but worries that problems like this are more frequent because too much drainage was done in past decades.
When his grandfather moved here in 1880, it was 36 years before flooding caused him to move temporarily out of the flood plain. And that was in the days before ring dikes.
Now the floods seem to come at least once a decade.
“We’ve improved the drainage up there,” he said, referring to higher land.
“We haven’t improved things for people down here.”
