Springbank Off-Stream Reservor (SR1): Although you may not be hearing about SR1 in the news, we are working on a written response to the regulators (NRCB in Alberta and CEAA federally) that outlines our concerns with Alberta Transportation’s responses and also poses additional questions that we don’t believe have been answered. While compiling our comments, we observed that:
The project has grown from an estimated 1400 acres in 2014 to the now 6800 acres envisioned in the latest responses from the Alberta Government.
Using the government’s own data, the cost has increased from $210 million (including Bragg Creek) in 2015 to $510 million today.
In 2016, the project jumped up materially to hold 100 million cubic meters of water from the 57 million contemplated in 2014 and the diversion channel doubled in size to hold 600 m/ s3 of water from 300m/s3 of water.
In 2018, the government added a new and material item to the project design: a $10m debris deflector, which will sit in the riverbank upstream of SR1.
The current projection for silt/ sediment deposit in Springbank is 2,300 kilotonnes in a “design flood” scenario = 2,300,000 tonnes! Anyone want to correct our math? That is 160,000+ 14 tonne dump trucks of silt.
For the record, they don’t plan to move it out, just move it around.
Why does this history matter? It shows the tremendous scope creep of this project over time. The project identified and approved for design in 2014 is nowhere near the project we have today.
One criticism we get is that we are somehow preventing the City of Calgary and 1.3 million people from billions in damages from catastrophic flooding. Firstly, the Elbow River was not solely responsible for flooding downtown so that is a terrible argument. Secondly, we are not holding anything up at all. We are only participating in the regulatory process. The process itself is stalled due to inadequate information from Alberta Transportation. The blame for delay lies squarely at the feet of successive Alberta Governments.
