ST. JEAN BAPTISTE, Man. — From the cab of his Chev Silverado, Robert Clement gazes at the Red River, a murky body of water swollen by spring runoff.
This year, the view offers a welcome relief.
“This is nothing,” he said, about the height of the river. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think this year is going to be too bad.”
Clement, a truck driver, lives north of St. Jean Baptiste at a farmyard bordering the Red River.
He saw the worst the river had to offer in 1997, when thousands of people in the Red River Valley were chased from their farms and rural communities by what became known as the flood of the century. Some of his neighbors never returned, choosing instead to move their homes to nearby communities protected by earthen ring dikes.
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This year won’t be a repeat of the 1997 disaster and it won’t even compare to the flooding of 1996, says Alf Warkentin, Manitoba’s senior flood forecaster.
Less than two weeks ago, the province warned that the Red River could swell to a width of 16 kilometres at points along the valley between the Canada-United States border and Winnipeg. On April 13, Warkentin offered a more favorable forecast.
“The river is going to spread a bit, but not that far.”
Under that scenario, some rural towns south of Winnipeg may have to temporarily close their ring dikes when the river crests later this month, but the closures will be minor.
There will also be some flooding of low-lying farmland.
The forecast offered some comfort to Denis Houle, a dairy farmer south of Letellier, Man.
While his family’s dairy barn is protected from the river by a dike, his house lacks protection. In three of the past five years, Houle has had to worry about his home flooding.
He thinks the risk of flooding along the river has been worsened by the amount of drainage work in the Red River basin. That basin extends into the United States.
Houle didn’t build a dike around his house because it sits near a highway bridge that crosses the Red River. The provincial highways department wants to expropriate part of his yard to build a new bridge.
He could not justify the time and expense of building a dike knowing that his house will one day have to be moved to make way for the construction.
If he can reach a fair settlement with the department, Houle will relocate and have his home mounted atop a large earthen pad.
He vowed it would be one of the biggest and highest earth pads in the valley.
Meanwhile, at the Super 8 Motel in Morris, Man., the receptionist and a fellow worker were upbeat last weekend about the diminished risk of flooding.
“How high does the river flow?” asked the receptionist in a sing-song voice.
“Three feet high and rising, mama,” chimed in the co-worker.
“We’ve got flood humor,” the second woman told a guest checking into the motel. “It’s a little watered down though.”
