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January/February 2009 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Nunavut Feature: Royal Ontario Museum Feature: Hero school The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

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Diverting disaster
Manitoba’s $665 million answer to the Red River’s revenge
By Steven Fick and Elizabeth Shilts

The winter of 1825-26 in Winnipeg was unusually harsh. It started early and lingered late, and when the thick snow and ice that it brought began to melt, residents barely had time to grab their belongings from their homes before the waters of the Red River spilled over the banks into the city. Between May 2 and 22, the water continued to swell and flow, and Winnipeggers taking shelter on higher land could see their furniture, carriages and even houses being swept away toward Lake Winnipeg. One man drowned.

The 1826 flood, the largest documented flood in Manitoba’s history, was a 1-in-300-year flood, a measure of magnitude indicating a deluge so strong that it should occur only once every three centuries. But concerned about changing weather patterns and the potental for widespread damage, the province wants to protect Winnipeg against the possibility of an even larger flood. If a massive 1-in-700-year flood were to occur today, it would inundate a much larger and more developed urban area (above). About two-thirds of the city, or 230,000 homes and 14,000 businesses, would experience some flooding, causing an estimated $12 billion in damages. To prevent such a disaster, Manitoba is in the process of building a $665 million insurance policy in the form of a major expansion of the Red River Floodway.

Since its completion in 1968, in the aftermath of a significant flood in 1950, the 48-kilometre-long floodway has been put into use more than 20 times, diverting the overflow from the Red and Assiniboine rivers and saving Manitoba more than $10 billion in flood damages. But in 1997, another major flood forced evacuations in the Red River valley south of Winnipeg and devastated the area around Grand Forks, North Dakota, at the southern end of the Red. Although Winnipeg was spared, the floodway came close to its tipping point — for a 1-in-100-year flood that was 40 percent smaller than that of 1826.

The five-year expansion project, which began in 2005, will more than double the floodway’s capacity by widening the existing channel, replacing and upgrading bridges and improving controls. The new infrastructure will minimize the impacts on Winnipeggers, even in the event of a 1-in-700-year flood. Despite these long odds, it’s better to be safe than soggy.

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