By Dylana Milobar

Cherry Creek residents hope flood mitigation comes with bridge construction

Jan 17, 2019 | 4:02 PM

CHERRY CREEK, B.C. — After back-to-back years of extensive flooding in the Cherry Creek area, three of the valley’s bridges are being replaced ahead of the anticipated spring flooding in 2019.

This week, construction crews have begun to repair and rebuild crossings at Greenstone Mountain Road, Rodeo Road, and Beaton Road, which were all hit hard by the raging Cherry Creek floodwaters in 2017 and 2018. 

But the area’s residents are still waiting for solid solutions to keep fast rising waters at bay in the spring. 

The Ministry of Tranportation’s Thompson Nicola District Manager, Trent Folk says there are 127 sites over the past two year that have been extensively damaged by flooding, which will take several million dollars, and a few seasons to get a handle on.

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“There’s 127 sites over the past two years that we’re working through, and we’ve repaired quite a few of them, but we still do have several million dollars worth of damage that we’re working to design and construct over the course of the next few seasons.”

The Greenstone Mountain Bridge project alone is estimated at $1.2 million.

“The work that we’re doing, replacing these washed out roads with bridges with an increased capacity, we’ll be working to put in armouring, riprap in the creek adjacent to the structures to protect them,” Folk explains, “and looking to mitigate the impacts to the highway infrastructure for any future flooding that might happen.”

Even with new bridges, Ronaye Elliott, the TNRD’s Director for Electoral Area J says she has some concerns the roads will be washed out again in the spring.

“We’re assuming with the engineering done on the bridges, that won’t happen, but there is some mitigation work to be done on the properties that are before those bridges.”

Despite construction getting underway on three bridges connecting the valley, Cherry Creek residents, including Corine LeBourdais, would like to see more work done on flood prevention efforts.

“People living in Greenstone Mountain can get home because there’s a bridge,” LeBourdais says. “While that’s wonderful, the rest of the people down the creek won’t have a home because you can’t just let water run in a huge amount in one area thinking it’s not going to have an impact somewhere else.”

Those living in the area worry about what they say is extra water from the diversion of Alkalki Creek into Cherry Creek will prove challenging — even for the new bridges.

“They’re making them quite wide, which indicates to me there is going to be a lot of water. They’re planning for a lot of water in the future, and there’s really nowhere for the water to go,” she explains.

That concern is echoed by residents who want to protect their property from future damage, like Wayne Holm, who is not pleased with wait times for permits required to build private flood prevention structures.

“There’s no way that we’d get a permit under 140 days. In other words, our properties would be all gone if we had to wait 140 days.”

The bottom line is people who have to rebuild each year think bridges are great, however they would like to see a more permanent water management solution. 

“They diverted the (Alkali) creek into Cherry Creek, which has caused all these problems. We did have a little bit more water, but not that much more than normal,” Wayne says. “But if they would have control over that creek, and put it back where it originally was, or contained it.”

CFJC Today reached out to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development for clarification, which provided this statement in response to concerns around potentially more water in Cherry Creek stemming from the Alkali Creek diversion.

“New Afton does have a diversion licence on Alkali Creek above the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) to ensure water is routed around, and not into the TSF.

This is authorized by water licence and adds no “new”, or “additional” water to the Cherry Creek system. Hydrologic evidence indicates Alkali Creek always flowed into Cherry Creek.

Furthermore, this license has been in effect for decades and is not new and thus not coincident with 2017 and 2018 flooding.

The mine did do maintenance of the diversion a few years ago with respect to the outflow of a New Afton seepage pond. Water in this pond is not released except under extenuating circumstances. It is typically pumped back into the TSF. Thus this results in no new addition of water to Cherry Creek.”

In the meantime, construction for the Greenstone, and Rodeo bridges is set to be completed by the end of April, with Beaton Road bridge construction starting in the summertime.