City staffers are stockpiling sandbags along the Sturgeon this week as the river floods to new heights.
Public works officials started working at certain spots along the Sturgeon River after it river reached a depth of about two metres at the Perron Street Bridge. Normally, it's about half a metre deep at that point.
The water is very high, says city environmental manager Leah Jackson, and staffers have been advised to watch the river closely. “It's above high flooding levels, even above the ones we reached in 2007,” she says, but still below the official 1-in-100-year flood level.
The river has dumped about 25 centimetres of water on the bike path under Ray Gibbon Drive, says local birder Dan Stoker, and turned many fields into lakes. “It's filled in a huge area.”
Some of the River Edge Enhancement Project plantings near St. Albert Centre are now completely underwater — not that that's a problem for those plants, he adds.
Heavy snowpack and recent rains were the likely cause of the flood, Jackson says, which she expects will peak in a few weeks. Public works staffers are now patrolling the river in search of ice or beaver dams that could worsen the situation.
This amount of water doesn't actually cause many problems in the city, Jackson says — the river has to rise another metre before they need to break out the sandbags.
Larry Wilkins, president of External Affairs Clinical Spa and owner of the River House Grill building, says he's not too worried about the water despite being right on the riverbank. “Yesterday [the river] was up pretty high,” he says, but it still needs about half a metre of height before it gets his business wet. “If anyone floods, it'll be us.”
All this water has caused the birds to spread out more, Stoker notes; whereas swans would normally gather at Big Lake, they're now hanging out in flooded fields by Walmart.
“It's higher, but it's not anywhere near the records of the past,” he says of the river — past floods have let residents canoe through the White Spruce Forest.
And it's great for the river itself, Jackson says. “All the fish are happy and all the riparian areas are happy.”
Any flood questions should go to public works at 780-459-1557.
