Dear Editor,

The Whitecourt flood mapping draft November 2014 is a single page document which shows the floodway and the flood fringe of a ‘1 in a 100 year’ flood event. The majority of the Town of Whitecourt west of a line running through the IGA parking lot and the east part of Rotary Park is under water as is the railway bridge across the McLeod River, and both Highway 43 bridges.
There is no question, this level of flooding represents a horrific flood, but it is not that much more severe than what we have experienced in the past. The river forecast sections (part of Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development) power point presentation made in January 29, 2015 has graphs which show our rivers have in the past run at 80 to 90 per cent of the level represented by the engineering standard used in the design flood.
However, this letter is written mostly because it is felt that the engineered ‘1 in a 100 year’ falls short of what we could be facing, and facing quite soon. This dire supposition is based on John Pomeroy’s position that there has been a ‘regime shift’ in our weather. (John Pomeroy is director for the centre of Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan and holds a research chair in Water Resources and Climate Change.) He indicates that a phenomenon exists whereby moisture laden low pressure systems move northward from the United States and ‘stall’ over our prairies – heavy rains and flooding occur. He attributes the last flood in southwestern Alberta, and the 2014 events on the Oldman River system to this phenomenon.
My dear editor, it seems reasonable, given the steady increase of the global average, temperature (increased energy in our environment) that one or more of Roy Pomeroy’s systems could move more northerly and stall over the Athabasca River watershed (includes the Pembina, McLeod, Athabasca, and Berland rivers). Depending on the intensity of the low pressure system, we could easily see a ‘1 in a 100 year’ flooding event. Such a flood would likely turn the fringe of the existing ‘1 in a 100 year’ flood into a raging floodway and move the fringe into the built-up business/residential part of lower downtown Whitecourt. It would be catastrophic!
It should be noted that the Alberta Government appears to have accepted the John Pomeroy position that the ‘regime shift’ is real, and has taken steps in southwestern Alberta to accommodate the possibility of ‘1 in a 200 year’ flooding events. Improvements are being made in the Oldman River irrigation and water supply infrastructure and the ‘Dry Dam’ near Springbank is being constructed to handle a ‘1 in a 200 year’ flooding event.
It is respectfully suggested that the existing ‘1 in a 100 year’ flood event study not be accepted if it cannot be confirmed (by a scientifically based assessment) that a flooding event caused by the phenomenon noted above will not exceed the ‘1 in a 100 year’ flooding limit. The citizens of this area need to know the truth – there is a lot at stake! Alex Bauer