On Sumas Prairie, BC hedges bets against Ottawa and Washington

Barrowtown Pump Station couldn’t wait. But bigger and better flood protection upgrades elsewhere on Sumas Prairie will have to.

With Ottawa dragging its feet and Washington State reluctant to build a dike along the Nooksack, the province announced Wednesday that couldn’t wait any longer. Premier David Eby announced the province will spend more than $76 million to construct a new flood wall and increase redundancy protections at the Barrowtown pump station, which was nearly inundated and almost failed during the 2021 flood.

The station was saved only through the efforts of a legion of volunteers who built a wall of sandbags to keep the floodwaters from shutting down the facility—potentially for months.

Triage unit

Eby said the federal government moves slowly and that the announcement Wednesday would allow the project to start regardless of Ottawa’s timelines.

But even as he announced funding for a project focused on preparing for another Nooksack River flood sometime in the future, Eby insisted he still hopes that Washington State will take action to stop that river from flooding north in the first place.

Building a dike in Washington State to prevent flooding north would be cheaper than the upgrades announced Wednesday. It would be vastly cheaper than more than $1 billion worth of additional work—including a second pump station and rebuilt dikes—Abbotsford says is necessary to protect the prairie in case of a future flood. But, as The Current has reported, the Americans believe such a dike could aggravate flooding south of the border.

Late last year, the province and Washington State announced they had finally created a framework to guide talks about how governments on both sides of the border could address the river’s propensity to flood.

Eby said the province will continue talking with Washington State about the issue, but that it was still important to spend millions to reinforce the Barrowtown Pump Station to protect Sumas Prairie.

“International co-operation takes a long time,” he said. “We can’t wait. We have to build this flood wall and make sure it’s in place as quickly as it can, instead of hoping the Americans will do the right thing and build the dike.”

(The Current has written about why building that dike is seen as ‘not politically feasible’ south of the border.)

Eby said the Barrowtown upgrades are urgently needed and can’t wait for the federal government to announce its participation. But BC hasn’t similarly green-lighted two other, more-expensive flood protection projects—the new pump station to replace the floodgates and new dikes—that Abbotsford says is necessary to protect the prairie. Those still appear to be dependent on the announcement of funding from the federal government.

Asked why the province has committed to the cheapest of the three projects, Eby said the matter involves triaging work both in the Fraser Valley and across the province.

He said the first goal is reducing the vulnerabilities of the current system—including Sumas Prairie’s apparent dependency on those locals who saved the pump station with sandbags and pool equipment.

“We have to identify the biggest risks, address those issues as quickly as we can, and move on to the next issue,” Eby said.

“In terms of this area right here, the biggest risk is that we’re calling Ken and Lee and Chris, [and saying] ‘Get the band back together, come on down, bring the pool liner to save the pump house.’ That is not a strategy. This is the immediate triage work that we need to do.

Shortly after the announcement, Conservative MP Brad Vis issued a press release on Wednesday calling on the federal government to release funding for the $76.6 million pump station upgrade. Vis and fellow MP Ed Fast have previously called on the feds to expedite money promised through the federal Disaster Financial Assistance program. Of $5 billion promised in 2021 by the federal government, less than half has been delivered.

The Current asked the MPs if a Conservative government would also provide funding for the $1.5 billion of flood protection upgrades Abbotsford says are urgently needed to protect Sumas Prairie.

“We are not in a position to fully assess what a future Conservative government’s response might be with respect to Abbotsford’s specific demands for flood protection support,” Fast wrote in an email."

The new upgrades

Here’s what the Wednesday upgrades mean:

Floodwall

A six-metre-high barrier to stop future high water levels from flooding the pump station. This is to replace the massive jerry-rigged volunteer-created sandbag barrier that required hundreds of volunteers to erect in 2021.

Debris screen

This is a trash rack that will keep large objects out of the pump station intake. This will reduce the risk that a large piece of wood or other debris damages or stops a pump from working. It will also mean fewer fish get chewed up by the station’s pumps.

New pump motors

These will allow the station’s pumps to pump more water. It will also “improve station efficiency and operating flexibility.” (The station has four different pumps. If each has a higher capacity, it allows the station to pump more water when one or more individual units are offline.)

Dual substation

The substation will get a second BC Hydro feed of power. That will reduce the risk that the station will shut down if its current source of electricity is cut off in the event of a massive outage (including from one of the semi-regular ice storms that hits the prairie every couple years). Abbotsford has already planned to add a backup on-site power generator to the station. That, though, requires a supply of fuel.

Here’s what the funded upgrades don’t include:

Raising and reconfiguring dikes in Sumas Prairie to funnel the Nooksack’s floodwater toward the floodgates.

The replacement of the floodgates with a new pump station that would allow water to be moved out of the prairie when the Fraser River is also high. Currently, if the Fraser is too high, water cannot escape Sumas Prairie. In 2021, that resulted in water accumulating in the western part of the prairie. Eventually the water rose above the dike that separates Sumas Prairie into two halves. When that happened, water started to flow into the lakebed portion of the prairie. The flooding was accelerated by the failure of a dike.

A new federal question

The announcement also saw Eby question the wisdom of a statement by federal environment minister Steven Guildbeault, who said Ottawa was no longer investing in new road infrastructure. Later, he clarified his remarks, saying he meant the feds would no longer fund the expansion of highways and road-based megaprojects.

The proposed flood improvements on Sumas Prairie include a plan to raise Highway 1 to prevent a repeat of 2021, when the country’s key transportation corridor was closed for more than a week because of flooding. That highway-raising would be tied into widening work and the addition of bus and HOV lanes through Sumas Prairie, though the timeline is decades away. The cost of the project would, inevitably, run into the billions of dollars.

Guilbeault’s statement suggests the federal government might not provide funding for the project. Eby was asked about those comments and called them “extremely worrying.”

“We were and are counting on the federal government to support us on the Highway 1 expansion work that we’re accelerating because of the importance of this trade corridor.”

Eby emphasized the need for the highways to get people to and from work and to transport goods.

Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens also spoke on the matter.

“Everything you see happening here—the gravel that comes out of the Fraser Valley that goes into build the infrastructure west of us—is coming out of the Fraser Valley. The food, the milk, the poultry, the eggs, the crops, all of those things go on that corridor.”

Siemens called the spending an investment, not an expense.

“Everything that comes out of the Port of Vancouver that can’t go on rail is going by truck,” Siemens said. “The trucking industry is a huge driver and very very important component to what moves our economy, so they have to fully understand.”