Lower Mainland flood prevention work must wait, province admits

Three years after one of the costliest disasters in Canadian history, the provincial government now says it doesn’t have the money to fully fund critical flood-prevention work in the Lower Mainland.

The Current reported last week that Tyrone McNeil, the chair of a regional group focused on reducing flood risk, had written a letter to Premier David Eby, expressing “deep concern” about a lack of funding to complete work promised in the province’s new BC Flood Strategy.

Related: BC Flood Strategy advisor 'unimpressed' by lack of funding to reduce risk

McNeil had advised the government on the new strategy, which lays out dozens of actions necessary to better protect residents from flooding. He said he had seen “little to no steps to move this important work forward,” and urged the province to allocate $6 million in next year’s budget for regional floodplain planning and fully fund the actions in the original strategy. That would include technical assessments, consultations, and development of projects meant to reduce damage from future floods.

But the province says it can’t afford the floodplain planning work.

“While the Province acknowledges the call for dedicated funding for regional floodplain planning in the Lower Mainland, current fiscal constraints due to competing priorities make it challenging to respond to this request at this time,” the ministry said in a statement sent after our story last Thursday was published.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship wrote that the government is implementing the strategy, citing work on projects to improve floodplain mapping and helping farmers prepare for floodwaters. The statement said the province is “securing incremental resources as appropriate” to implement the flood strategy.

But the lack of floodplain planning work is likely to delay future large projects that require collaboration between multiple municipalities and communities. The Fraser River poses BC’s largest flood threat, with a repeat of the 1894 flood likely to overtop dikes and cause devastation from Richmond to Hope. But haphazard and one-off flood projects can’t meaningfully reduce the flood risk, because restricting the movement of water in one area can increase potential damage in another place.

Any delay in funding flood prevention work could cost the province billions in future flood damages, according to a government document from just two years ago. An ‘Intentions Paper’ created as a precursor to the flood strategy emphasized that funding flood resilience projects now, rather than later, could save the province billions of dollars.

“Every $1 million of public investment made towards flood resilience during the 2020s-2030s will save an average of $7 million to $10 million in avoided flood damage and recovery costs in the 2040s-2060s,” the paper’s authors wrote.

McNeil made the same argument in his letter, arguing that despite today’s trade uncertainties, flood mitigation work is still worth pursuing sooner, rather than later.

“Rather than putting the Flood Strategy on the shelf, now is exactly the time, and the opportunity, to ensure that planning and investments are made strategically and are preparing our communities well for the future,” he wrote. McNeil added that action would help “protect vital trade routes,” potentially alluding to the fact that the Trans-Canada Highway, Canada’s largest rail lines, and two pipelines, runs parallel to the Fraser River.

The province’s deprioritizing of disaster-mitigation work mirrors that of the federal government. Like Victoria, Ottawa had promised a range of measures to reduce flood risk in low-lying communities. But although it has promised to implement a national flood insurance program, the government has not yet committed the money needed to actually create a federal insurance entity.

That lack of action prompted a sharp response from the Canadian insurance sector, which accused the government of neglecting to follow through on resilience-building measures.

The federal government has also denied Abbotsford’s request for more than $1 billion in funding to reconfigure a series of dikes to try to prevent a future Nooksack River flood.

Despite the parsimonious approach to disaster-prevention work, both Victoria and Ottawa have insisted they are committed to reducing the risk of future flood and wildfires. Local officials have generally struck a diplomatic tone, lobbying for more funding while trying to keep politicians far from the Fraser Valley aware that the region remains vulnerable to future flooding.

But memories are short.

In 1990, the Nooksack River overflowed its banks, spilled north into Canada, and caused millions of dollars of damage. For several years, Canadian officials and politicians fretted about the possibility of a repeated flood. But over time, those worries subsided and by the time 2021 hit, most in BC had forgotten about the potential for, and costs of, a major flood.

The 2021 atmospheric river prompted vows that things would be different this time.

So far, they are not.