Coldwater River, looking west (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

Merritt Flood Recovery

New provincial funding set to help Merritt design and build set-back dikes, acquire properties

May 23, 2025 | 4:14 PM

MERRITT — The City of Merritt says it has received approximately $3.4 million from the provincial government to improve its flood protection infrastructure. It says the money will go towards Phase 1 of the Middlesboro diking project, which will include the installation of 80-to-90 metres of dikes just east of the Middlesboro Bridge.

It’s the first approved project in the east end of town, with the funding going toward engineering work, construction and property acquisition.

Once built, the latest piece of approved dike work will move the city’s dike plan to about 70 per cent complete.

“We do have one project that is already granted. It’s about a $2-million project protecting the RV Park dike. This project is just the next section of this,” said Sean Strang, Director of Flood Recovery and Mitigation.

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While approval has come in for large swaths of the river channel, the order of operation has been a challenge for homeowners.

“The river comes in from the east and goes out the west. I don’t understand why we are doing little bits and pieces along the river. We should be starting, in my opinion, from where it comes into the city,” said Frank Craig, who was twice flooded out — back in the 2021 atmospheric river and then a 2022 flash flood.

“Doing it in the right order isn’t something we have been funded to do, unfortunately,” stated Strang. “I would say a lot of this has been done, not in the wrong order, [rather] not the ideal order. A lot of our projects just revolve around funding.”

Craig has rebuilt his home from the ground up after being flooded out not once but twice. Now finished, save for landscape work, his house remains in the line of fire.

“Yeah, I’m moving ahead and lots of other people are moving ahead but things are still… We are still very vulnerable,” Craig told CFJC News. “I would say, in my opinion, there isn’t anybody in Merritt protected from what we have done so far.”

More than four years since the flood which forced mass evacuations of the Nicola Valley community, the work to safeguard the city from future harm has been slow in terms of visible progress.

“[People say] ‘Hey, Merritt has all of this money for flood mitigation. Why aren’t things happening.’ And I’m going to say, ‘Things are happening.’ The pre-work that gets done, the engineering that gets done, if it’s done incorrectly that is when you see a North Vancouver wastewater treatment plant turn from a $1 billion show to $4 billion. There is a lot of pre-work that needs to be done and permitting that needs to be done,” said Strang.

In order to set back the dikes from the river, Merritt city council has approved property acquisition along the Coldwater, a decision it didn’t take lightly.

“There are 1,274 houses that are in the flood plain and we need to buy partial or all 27 properties in order to protect those 1,274. It’s a super tough decision to make. That is the decision council has made,” explained Strang. “It’s not a ton of properties but even one is important to that one person.”

The already approved and funded project in the Claybanks RV Park is set to begin this summer. As for Middlesboro Phase 1, the city expects an 18-month delay to get the permits needed to put a shovel in the ground for the 80-metre stretch.