Flooding continues outside Taber while town remains dry
State of emergency still in place as crews work to protect rural homes
Farmland around Taber, Alta., continues to look more like ponds than prairies, as local officials deal with overland flooding in southern Alberta.
A state of emergency remains in place in the Municipal District of Taber, about 260 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
"We've got a lot more snow that hasn't melted yet. If we get a warm streak that comes through and it all melts at once, we're going to have serious flooding all over the place," said Dan Pierson, who works for the Taber public works department.
While the Municipal District of Taber has been affected, the town itself was not — at least not yet.
"In town it's not a whole lot worse than it usually is," Pierson said. "Mind you … we've got lots of snow to melt here in town, so we haven't been affected in town a lot. But wherever we have to go outside of town for our outbuildings and stuff, there's lots of water everywhere."
Roads closed
Brian Schafer, the director of emergency management for the M.D. of Taber, said that the most significant outcome thus far has been a few road closures.
"Mostly it's because we have pumps on the road, hoses going across the road," Schafer said, "so it's just so people don't destroy the equipment."
Municipal officials prepared
Municipal administrator Derrick Krizsan said that municipal officials anticipated the possibility of overland flooding.
"Everybody has a great deal of concern about flowing water, and our council has indicated our primary objectives are protecting residential dwellings, which we have done and continue to do," Krizsan said.
"We're calling on residents to be cognizant that any additional water volume at this time added to the drainage channel — either through pumping or unnecessary excavation to drain fields — would overwhelm the system."
"We're asking people to be patient," he added, "let the water flow from the current locations before adding any additional flows to drain fields or whatnot."
Krizsan doesn't anticipate that the overland flooding around Taber will ultimately affect the town itself.
"We do know that the impacts from outside the municipality toward the town are very limited at this time," he said.
"We don't expect any flood impacts outside the municipality to impact the town of Taber."
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With files from Lucie Edwardson, Dave Dormer and David Bell