Premier Smith ‘open to revisiting’ Springbank dam decision for southern Alberta flooding
Global News
With work underway on upstream flood mitigation on the Elbow River, Premier Danielle Smith said she is open to revisiting the approval for the Springbank Offstream Reservoir.
Alberta’s premier is “open to revisiting” an approved upstream flood mitigation project designed to protect the province’s largest city.
Saturday morning on “Your Province. Your Premier” on Corus Radio stations, a caller named “Nick” asked Premier Danielle Smith to gauge her openness on revisiting the Springbank Off-stream Reservoir (SR1) approval, recalling her previous commentary as a talk radio host. Corus Entertainment is the parent company of Global News.
“My inclination is to say yes,” Smith said. “If there are a number of different proposals that we can have for Calgary, for southern Alberta, if we need to have some of these other types of approaches in other communities as well, then I’m open to revisiting those.”
Work began in May on the reservoir designed for flood protection of Calgary and communities along the Elbow River.
The province’s 2022 budget had $473.6 million earmarked for the three-year build. SR1 is designed to work in tandem with the Glenmore Reservoir to be able to handle the same volume of water that hit Calgary and area in 2013 – 70.2 million cubic metres – that caused $5 billion in damages and five deaths.
On Saturday Smith said she was “frustrated” that in the extended consultation process, recreation, irrigation and hydroelectric power were not part of the final project, calling it a “missed opportunity.”
Instead of being a reservoir that holds and feeds water into the city’s tap water system like Glenmore, Springbank’s structures will divert excess water from the Elbow River into a floodplain that otherwise has naturally-occurring flora and fauna.
Citing projections that further population growth – “if we keep growing, if we can double our population by 2050” – Smith said securing access to more water would be needed to accommodate that growth.
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