The phone rings, the door opens and Corinne Nimegeers invariably knows the reason.
“Someone calls or comes in that door every few minutes with another driveway submerged, road out, pasture lost or well flooded. And they tell us it won’t even peak until May 8,” she said.
Rising water is cutting into more than the roads in Nimegeers’ Rural Municipality of Humboldt.
On April 30 the rural administrator said her Saskatchewan RM had more than 30 major grid roads out and an entire lakeside resort community flooded.
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“We’ve applied for disaster relief from the province, but it has a deductible and a formula that will see our RM pay substantial portions of the cost of water damage this year.”
Record water levels are showing up in many areas of Saskatchewan’s northeast this year due to high soil moisture content last fall and heavier than average snowfall over the winter.
So far this spring 17 communities have declared themselves disaster areas and will be applying for provincial assistance to pay for repairs and the cost of managing the water emergencies.
“I just got three new culverts, $15,000. We budgeted $12,000 for culverts this year. With 30 plus roads out I’m going to need a bunch of them,” Nimegeers said.
RMs aren’t allowed to run budget deficits in Saskatchewan so Nimegeers’ council will have to approve a mill rate increase to cover the cost.
“That’s going to be tough for some of our farmers who won’t be able to seed a crop on some of this flooded land.”
Dale Harvey of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities said some RMs in the region are going to face high costs this year. He said a shortage of contractors will cause delays in repairing the damaged roads.
“I don’t expect a tally of the costs anytime soon, but it’s going to be high,” Harvey said.
Premier Lorne Calvert, environment minister John Nilson and public safety minister Warren McCall toured the flood-stricken area around Fishing Lake and Waldsea Lake last weekend.
They announced April 30 that permanent water control structures will be built at Fishing Lake this summer.
Calvert told reporters he would appoint someone to lead a co-ordinated effort among the municipalities, landowners and affected parties downstream to make sure the structures are built.
Proposals were made after extensive flooding in the area in 1997 but the work was never done because not everyone involved co-operated.
“That water is now in place and without some remedial action will stay in place,” Calvert said. “That work needs to begin immediately. Right now, there’s only a six-foot culvert that’s available.”
The government also intends to review the drainage patterns surrounding both lakes and recommend changes.
The province will also review the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program and announce details of a renewed program by mid-May.
Calvert said the government is obliged to stand by the affected families and help alleviate the significant regional economic impact of the flood.
Asked how farmers and ranchers experiencing economic disaster from three years of drought should interpret the government’s willingness to help flood victims so quickly, the premier said the situations are different.
“There are few tangibles we can do to turn around a drought,” he said.
Home and cottage owners on Fishing Lake in the RM of Foam Lake in east-central Saskatchewan continued last week to try to hold back rising water levels.
Foam Lake administrator Ron Kostiuk said there are 82 road washouts of varying size in his RM.
“It cost us $270,000 to repair last year. I expect it will be similar this year,” he said.
