High River Mayor wonders how far $125 million in disaster prep will go

The provincial government has made a lot about providing $125 million for drought and flood protection.

High River mayor Craig Snodgrass says when you look closely it doesn't really amount to a lot.

"$125 million for flood and drought prevention, to be spent over five years. Let me tell you how much has been spent in just the town of High River alone for our flood protection and what happened in 2013.

"It's over $350 million in a town of 15,000 people, so to say you're committing, over five years across the province, I can't tell you how minuscule those projects must be," he says.

He points out that's just for building berms and buying out neighbourhoods, it doesn't include rebuilding infrastructure.

Snodgrass says he understands it because he knows how difficult it is for governments to get ahead of the next disaster, as they're always paying for the last disaster. He says that's what happened in High River, Slave Lake, and Fort McMurray.

"They're always trying to catch up from those payments, so I get the number they're putting there because they just don't have it to be able to put in the hundreds of millions of dollars in some of these communities that need it individually at that level, you can't afford to do it on a 'what if and I've said this numerous times when I've toured other communities through High River and shown them what we've done and they ask 'how do you get all this, how did you get all this infrastructure approved and paid for and in place?' and I said we had a flood go through the middle of our town, that's how, and unfortunately that's what triggers the flow of money."

Snodgrass says it's an extremely difficult thing and while he can criticize the amount of money the province is putting out, at the same time he wonders what the other option might be when the government's always chasing what the last disaster cost them.

He says if the Town had put a lot of money into flood preparation in 2010 it probably would have been above the level of the flood previous to that which was 950 cubic metres per second, perhaps 1,100 cms, all that would have been wiped out in 2013 when levels hit 1,830 cms.

The mayor says one problem is you don't have the money and another is you don't know what's going to be needed next time around.

He says the town has now protected to over 3,000 cm.