Manitoba injects $21M for flood repairs

Manitoba is spending $21 million to drain waterlogged fields and repair damage from last spring's flood.

More than half of the money will go to improve drainage in rural areas. But officials examining the extent of damage also discovered a massive concrete support pier had shifted dramatically on a bridge entering the town of Ste Adolphe, south of Winnipeg.

Infrastructure Minister Ron Lemieux said the money is needed to shore up ring dikes around some southern Manitoba towns that were flooded by the swollen Red River.

Lemieux said the cash is especially needed by farmers in the Interlake region who have been "pounded by water."

But dikes around the towns of St. Adolphe, St. Jean Baptiste and Emerson were all damaged by the most recent flooding.

Officials have closed the bridge over the Red River from Highway 75 to St. Adolphe because one of the piers has shifted about a metre, Lemieux said.

All eight Red River bridges between Winnipeg and the U.S. border are being inspected, he said, adding the support pier under the bridge in St. Adolphe appeared to shift almost overnight.

"We're surpprised," he said. "We're concerned when it  moves inches."

The Highway 210 bridge will remain closed for the foreseeable future as the province investigates the extent of damage to the support pier which is a massive three-metre by six-metre concrete piling.