Fredericton buckles down on flood planning after money from Ottawa, public meetings

Public meetings on how Fredericton should adapt to flooding have underscored the long-term impact floods have on people, says a city official.

"We've had two floods in the last two years, but that's going to impact residents for many years yet," Sean Lee, assistant director of engineering and operations, said after a second meeting with the public and experts was held Thursday night.

The meeting took place after federal and municipal governments announced they would spend close to $30 million on flood adaptation over the next eight years.

"We're going to look at adaptation measures that we can use to make Fredericton more resilient," Lee said Friday. 

The work will fall under four main areas: key transportation corridors, critical municipal infrastructure, neighbourhood-level flood protection and watershed resilience.

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"Fredericton is a very old city, so we have a lot of old buried infrastructure," Lee said. "A lot of old pipes that are at end of life and showing signs of failure."

The money will go directly to the municipality "to invest in flood mitigation, to invest in berms and wetlands and floodgates, the kinds of things that are going to keep this community and individual Canadians safe in the coming years," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a stop in the capital.

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During the announcement, Mayor Mike O'Brien said the money will be used to protect key transportation systems and municipal infrastructure to make Fredericton "even more resilient" and ensure essential services can continue during flooding.

The work will help protect more than 27,500 residents within a 12-square-kilometre area, officials said. This would amount to protecting 83 per cent of the people now affected by flooding and provide long-term savings in recovery and replacement costs, according to the city.

Lee also said the goal is to pair the money with the city's infrastructure replacement money. 

"When we go in to do work on a street or a road and raise a road, we're in there once," he said. "We do all the work that needs to be done, and then we're not coming back in a number of years."

Major impact to businesses 

At the two public meetings this summer, Lee said the city heard from homeowners and downtown businesses about how they're impacted by flooding and what's available to help them.

"Flooding is a major impact to … the business viability of the downtown," he said.

City staff will combine what they heard at the two public meetings with technical and emergency operations data and come up with a plan to present to council by late fall.

"We're going to move ahead very quickly to see what we can get done in case there is another flood next spring," he said.