In a span of 36 hours last week, the Village of Pemberton (VOP) was hit with 70 millimetres of rain, causing serious flooding issues for certain areas of the community.
The southern end of the Village was among the areas hit the hardest by high-water levels, with the trailer park and the Peaks and Pioneer housing complexes at the highest risk of damage.
However, through collaboration between the Pemberton Valley Dyking District (PVDD), the VOP and Pemberton Fire Rescue, much of the water in the area was pumped out, avoiding any major issues.
“Realistically we got off very lucky as compared to the rest of B.C. We normally flood from rivers but this time we flooded just from rainwater and run-off from the drainages in and around Pemberton. The Arn Canal, which is a man-made canal that drains most of Pemberton, caused a bunch of flooding just because it didn’t have enough capacity to get the water out fast enough,” said PVDD manager Kevin Clark.
“But our saving grace was freezing levels stayed lower than expected and we had a bunch of snow in the mountains, which soaked up a bunch of the rain, and temperatures were lower than forecasts, so the Lillooet River didn’t go up and none of the big rivers really went up any measurable amount, so we ended up getting off very, very lucky.”
While there was too much rainwater for some of the town’s culverts and canals to handle, things could have been much worse had it not been for some major culvert replacements completed by the PVDD in September of this year, according to VOP Mayor Mike Richman.
“The dyking district does a fantastic job managing their infrastructure,” said Richman. “A good example is we just replaced two major culverts through the dyking district [by] the Arn Canal, right behind a fairly populated area of our Village, and had that not been replaced, they certainly would have experienced more flooding in their neighbourhood, so some good work has been done.”
According to Clark, projects like this that aim to replace aging and ineffective drainage systems in the Village are the key to finally fixing Pemberton’s recurring flooding issues.
However, these types of projects are too expensive to solely be put on the backs of taxpayers and often need government funding, which can severely slow down the process, often requiring the work to be spread out over multiple years, said Richman.
Adding complexity to the culvert issue in the Pemberton Valley is the question of who has jurisdiction over some of the usual problem areas, according to local MLA Jordan Sturdy.
While draining technically falls under the PVDD’s jurisdiction, some of the main points of concern happen to be plugged or slow-draining culverts that go under the highway, begging the question of whether or not the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MOTI) should be on the hook for fixing these problems.
One example Sturdy raised was from the summer, when a culvert under the highway was backed up, resulting in a local farmer losing thousands of dollars’ worth of potatoes due to the flooding that ensued.
“But is it [the MOTI’s] job to drain ‘X’ farmer’s potato field? [The ministry] would argue not really, but clearly it’s important. And now the PVDD, they’re responsible for drainage yet it’s a [MOTI] piece of infrastructure, so it is a totally legitimate concern that we absolutely need clarity on,” he said.
“There are a number of situations in the valley where significant roads that people live on don’t have culverts underneath them so when you get a little bit of high water, one side of the road has four feet of water and the other side has none. All have knock-on effects and cause problems, but [the ministry] says, ‘Look, the road’s fine.’
“So the ministry, when it comes to building roads, including things that cause river courses to change or hold back water, how much of a priority is that for MOTI? Well, MOTI priority is transportation, not necessarily drainage. The dyking district’s responsibility is drainage but the culverts under the highway specifically are not dyking district culverts.”
Sturdy said his office has set up meetings with MOTI to make sure these conversations happen and to try and sort out a solution to the jurisdictional conundrum.
A few kilometres further down Highway 99, Lil’wat Nation’s Chief Dean Nelson said Mount Currie was also lucky and thankful to not have had serious flooding from last week’s rainfall, despite that usually being a recurring issue for them as well.
However, the rain caused a different issue for the community in the form of a mudslide that closed a section of Duffey Lake Road, the main route from Mount Currie to Interior B.C., stranding many people in town.
Thankfully for those stuck in Mount Currie until the road was re-opened recently to essential travel, some community members stepped up to make sure they had what they needed to make it through the situation.
“At first it was recognizing, what would we do in a situation like that? What would we need?” said Nelson. “So there was community people that would drive down and see if people needed food or fuel or a place even to stay, and we do have contacts and communications with Emergency Management BC and Red Cross for anything that needs to be taken care of medically. But there were quite a few community members that were checking on these people every day and they were taken care of, from what I understand.”
Now that the situation is beginning to be resolved, Nelson wants to remind people to be prepared for anything when taking a trip on snow-covered mountain roads, especially ones like the Duffey Lake Road where there is no cell service if you run into trouble.
“You have to remind people not to become part of the problem. Winter preparedness [is key], and you have to be ready for the conditions,” he said. “I think that is a really good move to keep things safe. Is your vehicle equipped? Do you know what you are getting into before you even attempt it?”
