As unrelenting rain breached the banks of the Nooksack River in late November 2021 and swept north from Washington state into the Fraser Valley, former Abbotsford mayor Henry Braun knew his city was facing calamity when he got the call telling him the Sumas dike had broken apart.
“I knew right away we were in big trouble. I just didn’t know how much trouble,” recalled the previous mayor of the community of 150,000 people.
The catastrophic flooding that ravaged southern B.C. in November and December of last year caused billions of dollars in damage as farms, prairie land and even animals were submerged in the wake of an atmospheric river.
Nearly one year later and the city government awaits multibillion-dollar decisions from Ottawa and Victoria that will dictate flood mitigation efforts in the decades to come.
“It’s only now that we’re making the permanent repair at the breach,” Braun said from his former office at Abbotsford city hall, where his open-door policy gave way to a brief visit last week by the new mayor days before he was to be sworn in Nov. 7.
The 72-year-old, whose knees aren’t quite what they once were and whose blood pressure isn’t where his doctor would like it to be, decided in June he would not make another run at the mayoralty after serving eight years.
The day after he announced his impending retirement, city council voted in favour of the first phase of a flood mitigation plan likely to cost around $2 billion.
Council had been considering four different options leading up to the vote after months of public consultations.
Costs ranged between $200 million and $2.8 billion among those options. Council ultimately voted unanimously in favour of a combination of three out of the four.
The funding request has been forward to the province, which is still assessing the plan and will take the lead on directing the $5 billion promised by Ottawa to help in the recovery.
The centrepiece of the proposed flood mitigation plan is the $800 million Sumas pump station, capable of pumping 7.5 times the water that the neighbouring Barrowtown pump station can. Barrowtown was built on the Sumas Canal in 1981.
The size of the new pump station would make it the largest drainage pipe in Canada, according to Braun.
“Whenever they [province] give us the go-ahead, this is still going to take four, maybe five years,” he said, adding that the city has invested millions into the design work but that the giant pumps themselves will take two years to build in addition to the installation time. “This isn’t some pump you just buy off the shelf.”
Council’s flood mitigation plan includes the construction of three smaller pump stations as well as new dikes throughout the Sumas Prairie, travelling south from the Sumas pump station to the U.S. border.
The Barrowtown pump station adjacent to the Sumas pump station would also be upgraded, while the plan would look to replace temporary works with permanent works along the Sumas dike as well as develop more extensive floodways and controlled overflow pathways.
The city is also asking the province to raise Highway 1 from east of Sumas First Nation Reserve to Atkinson Road.
“The feds and the province aren’t going to fund 100 cents on the dollar, so there’s some skin in the game already,” Braun said, lamenting that the city did not get a definitive answer on the Sumas pump station before the end of his term this most recent Monday.
“But everything I’ve seen would lead me to believe that … if this is a priority of the province, the federal government will be there to fund that pump station.”
He anticipates that answer will come by year’s end.
“The rest of the plan will take seven to 10 years: Where should the dikes be? How high should they be? Because they don’t [currently] meet provincial dike standards and they need to,” Braun said. “That’s going to be a much longer conversation. But the pump station will just give us such a jump because that is the weakest link in our diking and drainage chain.”
Last month, a Senate committee report estimated the floods affected 1,000 farms, 15,000 hectares of land and 2.5 million livestock.
The report is recommending that the feds collaborate with the province on developing a comprehensive plan for flood control in the Fraser Valley and work with the Americans to better manage waters crossing between the two countries, specifically the Nooksack River.
The Senate also highlighted the urgency of addressing the flood risk facing the region, noting a 2015 study that concluded 87 per cent of the dikes in the Lower Mainland were “in less-than-fair condition,” and that 71 per cent of the dikes were “expected to fail simply by overtopping” in the event of a flood.
Senate witness and hydraulic engineer Monica Mannerström, principal of Northwest Hydraulic Consultants Ltd., re-emphasized to the committee that the floods were not the result of the Fraser River overflowing its banks, but resulted from the smaller Nooksack River overflowing in Whatcom County.
She said if the Fraser River overflows its banks, the damages “would be at least tenfold” of that of last year’s B.C. floods.
Braun said the representatives and stakeholders he’s met with from the U.S. federal government, Washington state and Whatcom County have all been receptive to concerns about another natural disaster devastating the region.
“I said, ‘Does anybody think that a pump station on the Sumas River is a bad idea?’ I have yet to have anybody say, ‘Yes, that’s not a good idea,’” he recalled from his past meetings with the Americans.
Meantime, one of the most vivid memories that’s stuck with him since last year was the discovery that so many Canadians from across the country descended upon Abbotsford to help with relief efforts.
“I can honestly say that when I watched the ice storms – just to pick on something – or the Red River floods in Manitoba years ago, I don’t think the thought ever crossed my mind to go and help them. And so I have a different view of that now today,” said Braun, adding that he and his wife have taken to scrapbooking all the notes and messages of support that came in from across the country. “That restored my faith in humanity.”
