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Municipal flood maps waiting for province to catch up

May 16, 2017 | 10:51 AM

Medicine Hat residents may have a hard time finding up to date flood maps for their property.

While information on the extent of projected flooding in the community is publicly available off the municipal government’s website, the data presented online is sourced from the province, not the local authorities.

The current maps do not show the impact from newly-constructed berms in the area, and city planners are still using data from flooding in 1995 to base their decisions.

As for the emergency plans in place for the city in case of a flood, the berms are ignored entirely.

According to Merrick Brown, the Coordinator of Emergency Management for the City of Medicine Hat, emergency plans are made for worst-case scenarios, which would ignore the berms.

Kent Snyder, the General Manager of Planning & Development Services for the City of Medicine Hat, said that while the municipal government had worked to figure out the new flood limits from the berms, it would be up to the province to update their maps.

His department is mandated to use the 1995 data from the province.

“If somebody wanted to build a new house or a new shop on private land, then we are mandated to use the provinces data to judge.

“If it’s a city infrastructure project, like a berm or a road, we use both (provincial and municipal data).”

Snyder also said it was a “good question” as to why the department would make decisions based on older data.

“The intent is that the province has given us the authority to grant approvals, and they’ve also structured all their regulations that every municipality is to provide approvals and consideration based on their flood mapping,” said Snyder.

“There are pockets, like us, that have different data, or updated data. The province wants a consistent approach, so everybody uses their map to provide approvals.”

Snyder said that if he was the provincial authority, he would want communities located in the same watershed using the same map, and indicated there could be dangers with communities making decisions without taking the regional picture into account.

As for the local level, Snyder indicated that the impact of the berms on flooding maps is not “terribly different”.

“We’re not talking whole neighbourhoods looking different, based on models,” said Snyder.

“It’s a couple of metres, kind of thing.”

Snyder said that the berms in place, new developments still need to be judged as if the buildings are on a floodplain.

“In reality, they are much safer than they were before,” said Snyder.

Flood information can be found at: http://gis2.medicinehat.ca/imap/default.aspx