MAPLETON – The township is collaborating with the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) on a flood damage assessment study.
The GRCA has received funding support from the federal National Disaster Mitigation Program and is currently seeking consulting services to assist in completing a Grand Valley-Waldemar and Drayton flood damage assessment study.
“These communities are frequently impacted with flood damage, upstream of GRCA’s major flood control reservoirs,” states a report presented by Mapleton CAO Manny Baron at the Feb. 22 council meeting.
“Completing these efforts will improve knowledge of the extents and impacts of riverine flooding on the communities and provide baseline for cost-benefit analysis of potential implementable flood mitigation solutions.”
The study will include a comparison of the long-term cost of doing nothing versus the cost to implement solutions in the near future and provide recommendations on how to proceed, the report states.
“There’s not a whole lot that we have to do here from the Mapleton perspective,” Baron told council.
“They (the GRCA) were just looking for support. They’re going to be going to sending a letter to residents affected by floods in the past.”
Baron said the goal of the study is to outline the cost to the residents over a period of time.
“Once that’s outlined and calculated, that’s where we jump in. And we can say, … over a 20-year period, it would have cost the township so many dollars to repair the damage,” he said.
“Or we can invest that money in a dike and avoid it completely.”
Baron added, “So the first step is just putting our logo on the letter sending it to the residents, and gathering feedback.”
“This is a good news report. It’s something that we’ve been working towards with the Grand River Conservation Authority since 2019,” said Mayor Gregg Davidson.
“Now that there’s funding in place and they can get this this process going, we can see what we’re going to be doing.”
Councillor Paul Douglas asked if there would be any cost for the township related to the study.
“No cost whatsoever … they’re simply looking for council support,” said Baron.
Council directed staff to work with the GRCA to provide what is needed to complete the survey.
