Rural municipalities do not want to be forgotten as rebuilding and repairs begin across flood-ravaged southern Alberta.
“Although there seemed to be some big initial contact from the government, it seems to have dropped off,” said Bob Barss, president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties.
He said he saw considerable damage during a July 2-3 tour of the municipal districts of Big Horn, Foothills and Ranchland, the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass and Clearwater County, but no one can estimate the total losses.
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“There is no way rural municipalities can pay for this infrastructure repair,” he said.
Barss said people realize that primary infrastructure must be repaired first, but small bridges and roads are the only routes in many rural areas.
Money has been promised to urban residents to replace homes, but rural people have also suffered losses that support their livelihood. Corrals, culverts, dams and dugouts were washed away along with rural roads and bridges.
“The rural municipalities that I talked to don’t know how much damage they have because they haven’t been able to go see. They can’t get into the back country,” he said.
Barss thinks the community of Exshaw in the MD of Bighorn west of Calgary was hardest hit. Twenty-five percent of the houses were probably destroyed and others are in a state of disrepair. The community lost power, cell towers and land lines for two days. It also lost six bridges.
The MD of Ranchland to the south lost roads and bridges. Crowsnest Pass isn’t much better, he added.
A fire that swept through the municipality in 2008 left dead trees and brush. The flood has pushed the debris into ravines and blocked the flow of tributaries that are needed to drain ground water.
The MD of Foothills, which surrounds High River, has a crew to repair roads and manage the cleanup, but the municipality predicts it will be weeks before all of the flood water is cleared through irrigation canals.
Clearwater County says most of the flooding affected its back country and has estimated the cost to replace infrastructure at around $2 million.
Barss said there is a shortage of manpower and equipment to do the work and not enough money to cover the widespread losses. The province has said it will rebuild, but municipalities are unclear how that might be done, he added
“I know the municipalities do not have the financial capacity to fix those bridges. We were underfunded for bridges long before the budget cuts.”
The last provincial budget cut bridge repair and replacement funding for the next three years.
“The province is going to have to come up with some way to do this.”
Resource companies have also lost infrastructure, and Barss hopes partnerships could be formed with them to do some of the rebuilding.
“There will have to be partnerships of government, industry and municipalities. Industry has to move as well.”
Barss is a member of a provincial flood recovery group, and he wants to set up meetings with the appropriate groups to deliver help to rural areas.
“We are all in this together. There can’t be a rural versus urban on this. Everybody has to be looked after.”
