M.D. waits approval from AEP on flooding solutions in Cold Lake subdivision

M.D. of Bonnyville council is pursuing a long term solution to flooding issues east of Cold Lake for over $1.3 million.

M.D. council approved moving forward with flood mitigation efforts at Crawford (Pinsky) Lake, which has been a problem area of flooding for residents for a couple of years.

This subdivision, across from the Grand Centre Golf Course and on the shores of Crawford Lake has been experiencing high water levels, was overtaken with water and left some residents with mini lakes in their yard last year.

Now, the municipality will wait for approvals from Alberta Environment before tendering the project.

“People have lost a large amount of their property,” said Reeve Greg Sawchuk on The Morning After.

“It’s now underwater, and it’s come to the point where we really have to look at a way of resolving it. We did have an engineering firm go out. They came up with a few options.”

After seeing multiple options, council chose to pump water from the lake north, where it would get into the gravity feed down north towards existing drainage channels to Cold Lake, said CAO Luc Mercier.

The issue with the area, Sawchuk said, was there is no outlet from Crawford Lake.

This is just one of the ongoing flood projects in the works in the M.D., said Sawchuk.

“The early estimate on the other projects – because we have Birch Grove, we have the other Moose Lake projects that we have to look after as well – we’re looking at probably $8 million in potential flood remediation.

“That’s a lot of money… I’ve come out and said the odd time, I don’t know how responsible we can be for increased precipitation and normal wetlands that are kind of reclaiming themselves,” said Sawchuk.

“That’s the balance that as council we’re going to have to find to try and try to make them happy, but also try not to break the bank at the same time.”