Homeowners overlooking the Bow River in the hamlet of Lac Des Arcs are facing an uncertain future as June’s floodwaters stripped away large portions of their lots along with the riverbank, leaving one home dangling over the river.
Bob and Nancy McGinn, who have owned the property since 1975, were months away from completing their home. The house had been painted recently and the couple was ready to begin installing the kitchen and bathrooms when the flood hit on June 20.
Twenty-four hours later, when they returned to the hamlet after being evacuated, nearly 10 metres of their yard and another six metres of sloping riverbank had vanished.
In the 38 years since Bob’s family had first bought the property there had been very little erosion along the bank.
“The fact that we never lost anything off that toe at the bottom of the slope in years past, we felt pretty confident about it, but when you get a situation with the perfect storm and all that rain flushing out from all the drainages, Heart Creek, Exshaw Creek, the sheer volume of water changed the current of the Bow and pushed it against the bank,” McGinn said.
When McGinn and his son-in-law checked on the house, they expected to find no water on the property and no damage, based on how Heart Creek had flooded through the community, damaging basements and septic fields. Instead, they found much of the yard was gone and the house was in jeopardy.
When they chose to redevelop their property, the McGinns had a slope stability test completed, which checked out OK.
In 2008, property owners along the riverbank began requesting measures to protect the bank from erosion, but were eventually told the Province did not have the dollars in a riverbank stabilization fund to support a project of that nature.
The McGinns, along with six other property owners along the bank looking north towards Exshaw and Exshaw Creek, hope restoration and rehabilitation is the eventual outcome, despite the fact it could be a large and expensive project.
The McGinns have been in touch with Iron Brothers, a company based in Nisku, Alta., that could use large steel screw piles to install a dam along the length of the bank in the river bottom that could then be backfilled and used to both armour the bank and reclaim the yards.
“It would be feasible, but that is a lot of fill,” McGinn said, “but then there’s lots of it around here too. If we could get down there on the bank and put in the screw piles, we could support the part of the house that is cantilevered out there and hopefully reclaim some of the land that has been lost.”
The other option is that the bank is armoured where it currently stands and Heart Crescent homes facing the river are removed, which would then put residents into a situation of being compensated and relocated.
“As I sit here today, I could get nothing,” said the McGinns’ neighbour Chris Read of the current value of his property after losing roughly 16 metres of yard and riverbank. “It would be a significant loss… all the way to buy out at fair market value. That’s a big range. We’re in a stage right now where that is very much (wait and see). They’re working out the details of the policy as we speak.”
Developing policy is not quick or easy, Read said, adding he expects that the process is still six to nine months out from resolving the situation.
“It’s going to take time for the affected people, the MD and the Province to work through this,” Read said.
No matter what the Province decides to do about erosion along the Bow River at Lac Des Arcs, Graham Lock, the community association president, said the bank has to be protected from further erosion as, if left as it is, it puts the entire hamlet at risk.
Banff-Cochrane MLA Ron Casey, Associate Minister for Recovery and Reconstruction of Southwest Alberta Kyle Fawcett and Wild Rose MP Blake Richards toured the hamlet Monday (July 15) and Lock said he hopes that will help convince authorities that work needs to occur along the river bank as part of the flood recovery program.
“I felt there was a genuine concern on their part that this was an unanticipated event they’ve gone away to think about. I’m hoping and trusting this issue will be on one of their lists or some sort of infrastructure investment to stabilize and protect our hamlet because it is not just those four or five homes,” Lock said. “It’s about the hamlet. If we lose another 50 feet we’re at the road. And then another flood will have it across the street into the next bank of homes.”
Casey told the Outlook Tuesday, the disaster recovery task force would look at every situation in the different communities in the Bow Valley, including Lac Des Arcs, as unique.
“The one thing they are making very clear is that this is a community by community program, so in other words it isn’t one size fits all. So what occurs in Canmore may not be the same solution as for High River or Bragg Creek or somewhere else,” Casey said.
“Each circumstance is going to have to be looked at independently and when they are doing that they will be talking to the municipalities and working with the municipality.
“The disaster recovery plan is fairly rigid in some ways, but the task force has the ability to work within communities and intends to work within communities to come up with the right solutions, so this isn’t one size fits all.”
