Image Credit: CFJC Today

By James Peters

Flood Waters

As Cache Creek flood waters recede, provincial officials assess damage to Highway 97

May 4, 2023 | 3:15 PM

CACHE CREEK, B.C. — B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure says Highway 97 through the village of Cache Creek will need repairs once flood waters recede.

Spring runoff water caused Cache Creek to spill over its banks earlier this week. Mayor John Ranta told CFJC Today it appeared to be at its height Thursday morning (May 4).

However, around the noon hour, the level of the creek began to drop.

“We have seen damage to the highway as a result of the overtopping of the road,” said the ministry’s Steve Sirett. “The good news is the creek actually went back into our culvert and is now no longer overtopping the highway, which has allowed us to get a sense of the damage that has occurred to it.”

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Highways 97 and 1 are closed to traffic at the centre of the village. There’s no word how long the closures will continue.

“We’re undertaking that assessment, so I don’t have all the details on all of the damage,” continued Sirett. “We do know there has been some. We do have crews there and material ready to start rebuilding that highway as soon as we understand the extent of the damage and it’s safe to do so. We have a geotechnical assessment underway and that will determine next steps.”

Flooding has become a near-annual occurrence in Cache Creek, leading to questions as to why further prevention work has not taken place. Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister Bowinn Ma said planning is in progress.

“There was funding provided by the province to Cache Creek to produce a flood mitigation plan back in 2020,” said Ma. “That work was completed in 2021 and following the flooding that we’re seeing right now, we’ll be reaching out to the community to understand how we can support them in actually implementing that flood mitigation plan that they’ve developed.”

The B.C. River Forecast Centre (BCRFC) has left flood warnings in place for the Lower Thompson region as well as the Whiteman Creek basin in the Okanagan.

BCRFC Head Dave Campbell says the rapid increase in small waterways, driven by a sudden arrival of extreme heat this spring, has been out of the ordinary.

“The conditions have been very rapid, in terms of the onset,” said Campbell. “The temperatures that we’re seeing right now — we’ve been pushing up into record territory for the past seven days or so. It’s very unusual to see this sort of rapid melt, this early in the season.”

“In some ways, this is somewhat helpful,” he continued. “We’re starting to melt that snow off. But really, whether additional flood issues emerge in the freshet is going to come down, really, to how the weather persists beyond here.”