Lumby Councillor Randal Ostafichuk, Vernon-Monashee MLA Harwinder Sandhu, and Vernon Mayor Victor Cumming at the site of the 43rd Street Creek Crossing (photo by Liam Verster / Vernon Matters)

By Liam Verster

Flood Mitigation

Flood resilience projects in Vernon & Lumby get provincial boost

Jun 13, 2024 | 1:10 PM

Three projects in the North Okanagan are underway to reduce the risk of future flooding events.

At a news conference in Vernon Thursday, June 13, Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee, announced $3-million in provincial support for the project to replace the Vernon Creek Crossing, and for the installation of two dikes in Lumby, to better prepare the communities against future events.

“As a proud resident of this area for several years I too have witnessed the local impacts due to changing climate, and it worries me,” Sandhu stated.

“It worries me not only for what happens when we all have to face these challenges, but for future generations like my kids as well.”

The project in Vernon, which began June 6 and saw the road closed to public traffic between 25th Ave. and 19th Ave., involves removing and replacing trees from the area, reinforcing the river banks, replacing the road over the creek with a wider bridge, and building a multi-use path.

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Landscaping, Environmental Work Underway

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“This project is vital for a number of reasons. Flood mitigation by replacing the bottleneck at the 43rd Street Crossing will significantly reduce the risk of overbank flooding that currently impacts six residential roads and approximately 50 properties in this area,” Victor Cumming, Mayor of Vernon, said.

“Also infrastructure protection. The clear-span bridge will protect the Vernon Water Reclamation Centre from recurring flooding, a major concern for the community. Also community safety, strengthening our flood mitigation infrastructure helps protect our local assets and prepares us for challenges posed by climate change, such as rising water levels and increasingly frequent water-related evident events.”

Construction crews on the scene of the 43rd Street Vernon Creek Crossing (photo by Liam Verster / Vernon Matters)

The projects in Lumby involve building a combined 900 metres of dikes along the Duteau and Bessette Creeks.

“In the past 10 years we’ve seen several one-in-200 year flood events, that each has almost crippled our community,” Randal Ostafichuk, a councillor for the Village of Lumby, said.

“The cost to protect the community from future events and help mitigate the effects of climate change in smaller communities like Lumby is beyond the ability for us to afford on our own.”

Cumming and Ostafichuk noted efforts would be made at the project sites to ensure the environmental assets are protected during construction.

“One of the things we worth with is to minimize the temperature increase of our creeks, particularly in the hot time of the season, but when we have to naturalize creek banks, it requires us to remove old existing trees and then get involved in the process of replacing them. So you’ll see trees come down in the area, and we will be replacing trees to provide this type of shade,” Cumming stated.

“We are always cognizant of the natural environment and trying to get it back to as close as we can to what it was before we had to do the work, but the reality as well is when a flood event comes through the damage that’s done after the event quite often is worse than removing a few trees to get the protection in place, but it’s always on our list of things we have to be careful of,” Ostafichuk stated.

The projects are being supported by a combined $3-million in provincial funding, with $1.1-million of which will be used for the project in Vernon and $1.9-million going towards the projects in Lumby.

Sandhu said each season poses some risk to the North Okanagan, be it freshet flooding in the spring, wildfires in the summer, or heavy rain and flooding in the fall, and the investments announced Thursday will help prepare the communities for those events in the future.

The City of Vernon has also contributed almost $2-million for the 43rd St. Crossing project, with a federal investment of roughly $1.3-million also going towards the work. The Vernon Creek Crossing project expected to be completed and the road reopened to the public in November.

The federal government has also provided approximately $2.3-million for the Lumby projects.