EDMONTON -- The spring thaw has brought flooding to Lac Ste. Anne County, and while the area sees some overland flooding on roads every spring, officials expect this season to be worst in recent years.
The county is waiting on modelling information on river levels from Alberta Environment.
“They’re struggling a little bit with ice flows and significant high snow pack that is still yet to come down so they’re working very hard for us dealing with a modeling system that will give us a really good idea of where and when and how much water we will be seeing,” Carole Marciszyn-Peacock, Lac Ste. Anne County’s Emergency Management Director said.
High flows on the Paddle and Little Paddle Rivers are areas that are especially concerning this year.
“That also adds to our flooding that we see typically every couple of years with encroaching the dykes or overtopping the dykes,” Marciszyn-Peacock said.
Culverts are also a problem.
“They’re blocked with ice, they’re blocked with snow, they’re blocked with dry grass and what not so the water can’t get through them.”
Lac Ste. Anne isn’t the only region where melting water is causing flooding. Legal is seeing flooding in low lying areas, and some roads in Sturgeon County are under water.
Further north, the Town of Peace River declared a state of local emergency late Saturday night due to a wave of water creeping into the town's downtown core.
Flash Flood Alert Updated Apr18 1119PM Take necessary precautions. Town of Peace... https://t.co/L8ht6OCtPQ #ABemerg #ABflood
— AB Emergencyalert (@AB_EmergAlert) April 19, 2020
The Town of Peace River declared a state of local emergency late Saturday night due to a wave of water creeping into the town's downtown core.
The alert indicates a number of roads are affected in the area of 100 Avenue and 100 Street, and to not go downtown and avoid the area.
At approximately 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Pat’s Creek Culvert started to overflow near Centennial parking lot.
“People did evacuate themselves,” said Peace River Mayor Tom Tarpey. “We had actually booked about 25 hotel rooms to move people in in case they needed some accommodations but they found their own accommodations.”
“There were probably about five, maybe six people that were displaced.”
The town suspects an ice jam in the culvert led to overflowing, and caused the flooding.
“It apparently got jammed up with ice or some other debris from flows, a large surge of flow from up in the hills and blocked the viaduct,” Tarpey said.
Crews were originally set to breach a dike to allow water to flow out of downtown and into a nearby river, however that option was avoided.
“If it continued like that we would have probably had to breach the dyke that goes into the Peace River and we didn’t want to do that because one of our concerns was the Smoky River which is just upstream of us confluences with the Peace River and that’s about to let loose either today or tomorrow.”
Several roadblocks remain in place along Main Street and throughout downtown near Riverfront Park.
“It resolved itself but there was water that got in some of the buildings. I think there’ll be certainly five businesses that I know of that will be impacted significantly,” Tarpey said.
“The Alberta Health Services mental health building is seriously flooded and also our community theatre.”
Tarpey said the state of local emergency will stay in place for at least another day in case there are more surges.
“We’re still on alert but I think that we’ve passed the dangerous stage.”
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Amanda Anderson
