By Adam Donnelly

Cache Creek prepares for more high water next week

Apr 28, 2018 | 5:29 PM

CACHE CREEK, BC — The water came hard and fast on Friday night – with both Cache Creek and the Bonaparte River spilling their banks around 6:45 pm, prompting the Village of Cache Creek to declare a state of local emergency.

“Cache Creek overflowed its banks and was running over the road and down the highway towards the Husky station,” Mayor John Ranta recounted.

On Saturday morning the water had receded, but mud and debris covered the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 97.

“If you’ve got warm weather, the snow melts up in the hills,” Ranta explained. “It takes a couple of hours for it to come down to Cache Creek, so the river level goes up in the evening and then drops down overnight.”

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The Village had a sandbagging work bee scheduled for Saturday morning, which saw dozens of volunteers filling sandbags for many of the property owners who live along either waterway.

Chloe Gravelle owns the Riverside Mobile Home Park on the Old Cariboo Road, which backs right onto the Bonaparte. She says after three consecutive years of high water, the river has cut away a significant amount of her property.

“That tree that’s standing there used to be inside the park,” Gravelle said, pointing to a partially submerged tree. “I’ve lost 12 to 15 feet of riverbank due to erosion.”

Janika Thur, a resident of the park, spent the past couple of days watching the water rise.

“In the last two days it’s come up hugely,” Thur told CFJC Today. “[Friday] it came up, I would say, a foot.”

While she’s mobilized a number of friends and family to help with sandbagging, she says she can’t help but worry about what might happen if the water continues to rise.

“We’ve gone through this now, it’s the third year,” Thur said. “You always worry about what’s going to happen to your home, or what’s going to happen to the riverbank, is it going to take more sediment away? It’s a stressful time.”

While the cool weekend temperatures have helped lower water levels in the village, Ranta says in speaking with the BC River Forecast Centre, there’s still significant runoff expected for both Cache Creek and the Bonaparte River.

“Right now [the Bonaparte] is flowing in the neighbourhood of 30 cubic metres per second,” Ranta said. “They expect it to peak around 97 cubic metres per second, so two to three times what we’re seeing in the Bonaparte River right now, which may have an impact on some of the lower lying areas of Cache Creek.”

And Cache Creek isn’t the only area preparing for flooding. Cherry Creek residents are also facing high water woes. One resident said on Facebook over the weekend that many of the residents in the low-lying areas are elderly and need assistance to fight the rising waters.