BC floods.

[Blaithin]

City wide flood prevention needs city wide effort. Winnipeg built a floodway many years ago. It paid for itself many times over.

Individuals can't build a floodway. We can prepare ourself to a certain degree, but a lot of the work has to be done by governments. And it takes a lot of money. That's why it doesn't get done as soon as it should. Taxpayers often don't want to pay for it.

You mean the floodway that was considered good enough until it almost failed and the valley flooded and then they upgraded it?

That doesn’t sound familiar at all…

[shtferbrains]

They obviously have dikes.
The question is who was looking after them and who stepped up to take control when they began to fail?
It's happened before. Did they have a plan to handle it or did they just hope it would stop raining.

Did you read the article by the environmental economist?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

or
Nobody will take your illogical rantings seriously.

I am very pleased that you recognize that my entire above post was illogical ranting perhaps now you will recognize that when you state the exact same things, or our media or our politicians or are supposed environmentalists. Because that is the exact same irrational illogical arguments they make
Glad I could help you recognize that. Feel free to point it out next time you see it in the media or in one of your own posts.

[chuckChuck]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadas-climate-reckoning-is-upon-is-the-costs-of-ignoring-the/

Canada’s climate reckoning is upon us. The costs of ignoring the warnings will be enormous
Gary Mason
Gary Mason
National affairs columnist

Temporary bridges that will help restore traffic along British Columbia’s vital Coquihalla Highway have begun arriving in the province after this month’s historic rainstorm.

It’s still uncertain how much longer the highway will be closed as a result of the damage, but its reopening is a priority. The Coquihalla is an important commercial supply route, and as such has been the focus of much attention since an “atmospheric river” flooded towns, caused mudslides and rendered several highways impassable.

One of those that has not received much notice is Highway 8 in the province’s Interior. While aerial shots of collapsed portions of the Coquihalla have been distributed widely, images of the destruction along Highway 8 have not.

However, it’s when you see pictures of it that you begin to comprehend the scope of the rebuilding job at hand.

Helicopter pilot Bradley Friesen flew over the scene last week and posted video to social media. It is staggering. Several long sections of the highway simply don’t exist any more, their remains presumably lying somewhere in the Nicola River that runs beside it.

Government officials are in the process of determining the extent of the damage. No estimates have been released on how much it will cost to rebuild but it’s hard to imagine it won’t be billions. The Royal Bank of Canada estimates the cost of repairs related to the disaster to be at least $7.5-billion. That seems low.

So far, the bodies of four people killed in mudslides have been recovered. One person is still missing. Meantime, people have begun returning to flood-ravaged homes. With more rain in the forecast, however, communities remain on high alert. All of which is to say that while it may be too early to start talking about the grubby subject of money, it’s a conversation that is going to have to happen soon.

And it’s not just the cost of repairs that need to be discussed. It’s also the cost of mitigation and the upgrades to critical levees and other infrastructure that are needed in the face of climate change. The adaptation improvements for which multiple reports, stretching back years, have been calling.

What happened in B.C. was a tragedy, unquestionably. But it was also a tragic failure of leadership by successive provincial governments. The dikes that were breached in Abbotsford were long forecast to fail. A B.C. government report in 2015 found that 71 per cent of 75 dikes in the Lower Mainland were vulnerable to breakdown.

Another report published three years before that pegged the cost of dike improvements in just one area of the Lower Mainland at nearly $10-billion. Yet nothing was done.


In 2018, the B.C. Auditor-General said the government lacked an adequate plan to manage the risks posed by climate change. This, despite the fact that forest-fire seasons were growing longer and that high-volume, destabilizing rain events such as the one that took place last week have long been predicted to increase.

Still, no plan. Government after government just kept gambling with people’s lives. The B.C. Ministry of Environment says a climate preparedness and adaption strategy should be ready some time next year. Another report – same as all the others that were ignored.

This is madness. Premier John Horgan can say that “even the experts were … surprised” at what happened with the rainstorm, but that’s not true. The “experts” have been issuing warnings. The “experts” were saying the government long ago needed to begin urgently upgrading critical infrastructure.

A report issued last year by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices said the number of catastrophic weather events in this country were three times higher this past decade than in the 1980s. And the average cost of each disaster had jumped 1,250 per cent since the 1970s.

So there is an economic incentive to take action. The Mayor of Abbotsford, Henry Braun, estimates it will cost north of $1-billion to repair the damage caused by the breach of the levees in his city – levees that should have been fortified and upgraded years ago at far less cost.

We are in the midst of a climate emergency. This is not theoretical and hasn’t been for some time. But if people needed hard evidence of the dire consequences of ignoring climate change, they have it.

The B.C. government needs to sit down with Ottawa and municipalities in the province to establish a comprehensive climate adaptation plan that begins now. Not years from now. The price tag will be enormous, but we have no choice.

The crisis we are in is going to get worse before it gets better.

[Blaithin]

Chuck you could post your deepest darkest secret in the middle of your posts and nobody would ever find out because nobody reads your cut and paste novels.

Post the link, if we want to read it, we’ll read it.

[Partners]

The copy and paste KING is still at it.
Time he was removed..

[chuckChuck]

Yup the current generations have shorter attention spans. Blame social media.

If you don't want to read it. No problem. I skip over most of the threads on this site and focus on the ones I am interested in. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

I see the "Libertarian censors" are back at work. LOL

[Partners]

If you don't want to read it. No problem. I skip over most of the threads on this site and focus on the ones I am interested in. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Others got the boot for copy and paste.
So are you related to the administration???
Special..???

[chuckChuck]

Others got the boot for copy and paste.
So are you related to the administration???
Special..???

You seem very selective when it comes to which cut and pasters you want banned! LOL

[agstar77]

Yup the current generations have shorter attention spans.

If you don't want to read it. No problem. I skip over most of the threads on this site and focus on the ones I am interested in. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

I see the "Libertarian censors" are back at work. LOL

It would be best to post a link and not the entire article. Summarize the information as in B.C. was not prepared for predictable crisis. Human nature is to react after a crisis not before. Would it be politically acceptable to mandate all habitation be moved out of the flood plain?

[Hamloc]

City wide flood prevention needs city wide effort. Winnipeg built a floodway many years ago. It paid for itself many times over.

Individuals can't build a floodway. We can prepare ourself to a certain degree, but a lot of the work has to be done by governments. And it takes a lot of money. That's why it doesn't get done as soon as it should. Taxpayers often don't want to pay for it.

In your article by Gary Mason it is pointed out that governments have studied what needs to be done to adapt to changing climate but he also points out that nothing was done. The problem with successive governments is that they have been all talk no action. That is the problem with governments in general in my opinion.

[chuckChuck]

In your article by Gary Mason it is pointed out that governments have studied what needs to be done to adapt to changing climate but he also points out that nothing was done. The problem with successive governments is that they have been all talk no action. That is the problem with governments in general in my opinion.

On a lot of issues that's very true. But considering the budget pressure most provincial governments are under in providing health care and education their 2 largest budget items, they often just don't have enough money to go around. These are very long high costs long term investments. But as Gary Mason points out the cost of doing nothing is higher.

[Partners]

[QUOTE=chuckChuck;519188]You seem very selective when it comes to which cut and pasters you want banned!

You copy and paste on every topic..
Forever...

[chuckChuck]

It would be best to post a link and not the entire article. Summarize the information as in B.C. was not prepared for predictable crisis. Human nature is to react after a crisis not before. Would it be politically acceptable to mandate all habitation be moved out of the flood plain?

The Globe and Mail is a subscription based site so the link will not open unless you are a subscriber.

Its very easy to choose what you read and comment on. If there was a shortage of space on the site, which there is not, people can easily just scroll by.

If the administration wants to limit post size they can put a smaller limit on the number of characters.

If people do live on flood plains then make sure they have some level of protection. Often when there is a big flood many people will move out of the risk area but some will not. In the case of Sumas lake the ag land and livestock operations are very important. So that requires another level of protection.

[shtferbrains]

10 billion dollars to improve dikes?

Sounds like government accounting.


You ever watch the amount of dirt they move in those gold mining shows with a few million and a bunch of wore out old junk?
Get at it! Don't just sit around wringing your hands and spending all the money on climate change studies.