Manitoba’s Highway 26, a meandering and normally quiet route between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie, became the main passageway for excavators, scrapers and other earth moving equipment as the province prepared for the flood of 2011.
Since March 11, the provincial government has used more that 230 pieces of equipment to reinforce and raise 70 kilometres of dikes along the Assiniboine River between Portage la Prairie and Headingly.
The dikes were raised to the level of the 1976 Assiniboine River flood, plus two feet, to protect farmland, farms and the communities of Elie, La Salle, Sandford and Starbuck from flooding.
Initially constructed by the federal government in 1912, the dikes were reinforced following the 1950 and 1997 floods in Manitoba.
Forecasters expect high water levels in the river this spring because soils are saturated and snow depths are higher than normal in the Assiniboine River basin.
