Jennifer Howe Project Manager

CEAA Project @80123

From: Charles Hansen

Sent: June-08-16 3:12 PM

To:

Subject: Fw: How to Lose a Forest for the Trees,or a Reservoir for the Drops

ESRD hires IBI to examine COST::BENEFIT for onLy 3 Conclusions of STANTEC.

They stated that other “Previous Studies” were previously reviewed; But by whom and not

allowing my concept to conduct FEASIBILITY EXAMINATION in order to determine

“sufficient information regarding the available solutions, and their relative merits, to focus its

immediate investments on the Springbank Project and to bring it to completion as soon as

possible to protect this City.”

IBI did not perform a proper engineering FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS as i proposed in order to

evaluate the construction and hydrogeological, ecological, environmental conditions of

influence.

They instead hired WATER SMART unlimited funds to examine Elbow River landscape

geography,,,,, Not EKISTICAL DYMAXION REGIONAL COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING,

to examine and evaluate prescriptive Initial Design Concept decisions.

a) Therefore, Therefore I and my consultant consortium were not engaged to

provide a Feasibility examination. A FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS is required to examine and LIDAR Scan each of all MICRO Watersheds in order to be able to determine which ones can be reached along a dryed simmer river and creek bed in order to motorize the rock moving equipment to push the “glacio-fluvi”o into a 2 to 3 meter wet or dry dams. Only then could the volume of MICRO WATERSHED IMPOUNDING be estimated. Not as STANTEC, WATER SMART and IBC has unprofessionally verbally described.

Respectfully submitted;;;

Charles Hansen

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From: Calgary River Communities Action Group Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2015 9:24 AM To: Subject: How to Lose a Forest for the Trees,or a Reservoir for the Drops

Calgary River Communities Action Group Update Is this email not displaying correctly?

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How to Lose a Forest for the Trees, or a Reservoir for the Drops As our Members have known since the beginning, a principal Mandate of CRCAG has

been to advocate for upstream flood mitigation infrastructure on both the Bow and Elbow

Rivers. No other strategy can keep huge volumes of water out of our City and reduce the

need for local, area-specific and typically much more costly infrastructure, and address the

insidious problem of groundwater.

For the Elbow River, you will have read articles or seen news clips regarding the relative

merits of the Springbank Off-Stream Reservoir Project and the McLean Creek In-Stream

Dam. As we said in our advertisements in recent Calgary Herald and Sun newspapers,

CRCAG strongly favours the completion of the Springbank Project currently underway, as

the first priority mitigation project on the Elbow River, for many reasons that we have

already stated. In this post, we thought we'd provide further comments.

First, though, we feel it necessary to provide our views on why this discussion is in play at

all, considering the Springbank Project has been in-flight for months and taxpayers have

already made very significant investments in it. How is a question that threatens the

completion of meaningful and prompt mitigation on the Elbow River, that is closer to

completion than any project since the Glenmore Reservoir, even back on the table?

Prior to May's Provincial election, the City of Calgary and CRCAG both issued surveys to

all political parties that asked several questions, including plans for upstream mitigation on

the Elbow River. Responses to our survey are here and are the same as those given to

the City Survey. We raised our concerns with the response received from the NDP as it

suggested that it would halt the in-flight Springbank Project in favour of the McLean Creek

Project, effectively negating the investments made to date and creating the real risk of

completing any mitigation on the Elbow River at all, given the contingencies to the McLean

Creek Project that we’ll elaborate upon below. The reasons given by the NDP in support

for the McLean Creek Project were cryptic and did not reference the data and studies

generated to date.

After the NDP won the election in May, we reviewed their "Election Platform 2015"

document, being their official policy platform, and found no reference to the words "flood"

or "mitigation". In searching the Internet to see if we could determine the genesis of the

Survey response, we did find similar language posted on the Facebook page of the NDP

candidate, and new MLA for Banff-Cochrane. That page is no longer live.

So, given this, we did not see the Survey response as settled NDP policy that is at all

binding on it. Our view was affirmed by comments made by Premier Notley post-election.

However, opponents to the Springbank Project seized on the Survey response as

constituting an NDP "promise", the media followed suit, and the impression was created

that the Springbank Project was officially cancelled because of a firm policy position on

the matter. However, since then, the Province has confirmed that the Springbank Project

is currently proceeding. All key NDP decision makers are now being briefed on the matter

and being provided with the significant volume of materials, data and studies that have

been compiled to date.

Now, with respect to upstream mitigation for the Elbow River and the general flood

protection of this City, we offer the following observations. This is a long post, but we think

an important one.

Last September, when the Prentice Government made the decision to focus taxpayer

dollars on furthering the work needed to complete the Springbank Project in priority to the

McLean Creek Project and the Glenmore Diversion Tunnel, it appeared that for the first

time in 15 months, real political leadership focused on upstream flood mitigation on the

Elbow River to keep water out of this City, was on display. After months of reviewing

previous studies regarding the management of the Elbow watershed that go back over a

century, and additional extensive study by the Province of Alberta, the Southern Alberta

Reserve Task, Stantec, AMEC and a host of other professionals, the Government

determined that it had sufficient information regarding the available solutions, and their

relative merits, to focus its immediate investments on the Springbank Project and to bring

it to completion as soon as possible to protect this City. That was expected in 2018, years

ahead of the projected timeline for the McLean Creek Projects or the Glenmore Tunnel

Projects, and at a significantly less financial cost and environmental impact. The Province

has posted just some of its project work here (online searches will link to plenty of

Provincially generated materials) and here is a link to the studies it has conducted and

commissioned on these larger Projects.

One comprehensive study that was underway at the time, but not completed for

publication, is the “Benefit/Cost Analysis for Flood Mitigation Projects for the City of

Calgary” prepared by the IBI Group for the Province, with financial modelling of the

benefits to upstream mitigation against the projected costs for each of the three Elbow

River mitigation Projects as then scoped and configured. This was publically released in

February of this year and here are a few important considerations regarding it:

The IBI Study applies financial modelling to determine flood losses, as it is

impossible to know these with any absolute certainty. The model has been used

and refined by IBI for decades in Alberta and elsewhere, and by other agencies in

North America. It appears to us to be robust and defensible.

The IBI Study specifically did not attempt to account for the social and

environmental benefits or costs, only financial. For example, no accounting for

personal safety and lost lives were factored in (as though it could be), and no

estimate of the environmental damage to Calgary and Southern Alberta from the

2013 flood (which clearly is the “baseline” to any environmental impact

assessment) was calculated.

As with all models, best available data was used or generated to limit

assumptions. But when applied to any ongoing project, that data is refined and

assumptions replaced with better information. Any such limitations apply to both

the benefit and cost analysis for all three Projects. The important point is that the

modelling parameters were applied to all three Projects, with an “apples to apples”

comparison approach taken as best as possible.

The IBI Study linked above clearly concluded that, as between the three Projects, the

Springbank Project showed the most promising benefit/cost ratio on the parameters

studied.

In our view, this more disciplined analysis confirmed the work done previous to the

completion of the IBI Study by the Province and its professional consultants, that

demonstrated that the Springbank Project was superior to both McLean Creek and the

Glenmore Tunnel Projects, as the initial project to be undertaken by the Province. We’ve

always maintained that the Elbow River, like the Bow River, should be mitigated to at least

a 1:200 year event level and that completion of two of the three Projects should be

undertaken on the Elbow, but to protect this City as quickly and effectively as possible, the

Springbank Project appeared to be the right place to start.

Most importantly, studies indicated that the environmental impact to the McLean Creek

Project, being an on-stream water retaining dam in a Provincial Park, would invite much

more environmental scrutiny, stakeholder input, study, mitigation planning and obstacles

to overcome, than the Springbank Project. This, and recent experiences in building any

environmentally challenging infrastructure in this Province, introduces very real

contingencies to the McLean Creek Project being completed at all, let alone that every

year’s delay in completing any Project diminishes the political will to do so. What’s the

half-life to political urgency? Each year of delay also exposes Calgary to unnecessary

financial (not to mention social and environmental) risk: the IBI Study calculates “average

annual damages” from flood risk at up to almost $20MM/year and there is a 23% chance

of the City experiencing a 1:20 year event in any five year period. The environmental

review for McLean Creek posted here outlined the environmental considerations and

estimates the review and approval phase to be up to 69 months, before earth starts to

move. We legitimately fear it could be considerably longer when environmental and other

stakeholder groups (all of which are unknown at this time) fully engage.

And construction of the McLean Creek Project will certainly face challenges. Given that it

is an on-stream dam of a navigable waterway, we understand that construction can only

occur in 3-4 weeks of the year. Further, while some have criticized the large volume of

earth to be moved for the Springbank Project, that ignores that that material will actually

be used to construct the reservoir itself, so remains on site. In contrast, we understand

that the building materials for the McLean Creek Project will have to be transported to site

as the area is comprised of large and porous gravel deposits.

For these and a host of other reasons, we strongly believe that the Springbank Project

must be the first to proceed. Given all the variables in play, we believe the Springbank

Project clearly satisfies the single most important criteria to any of the three Projects. It’s

achievable. It’s achievable before the next provincial election! And it is currently underway,

with significant taxpayer investment to date that would be lost if halted. Given the very

many challenges facing this City right now, the Springbank Project would be a

tremendously important initiative and a clear win for this City and this new Government.

Cancelling or even delaying the Springbank Project is unnecessary, unjustified and would

be seen as yet again kicking the political can down the road, to the immediate detriment of

this City and Province. We cannot continue to expose this City and Province to real,

known and ongoing risk.

Certainly not chief among the reasons to support the Springbank Project was the outcome

of any benefit/cost analysis based on financial modelling. This is not to say that gaining a

sense of any infrastructure’s “return on investment” isn’t important, particularly when

Provincial or Federal taxpayer’s money is in use. But having very directly seen the

phenomenal damage, public safety risk and palpable threat to this City’s long term

viability, there is no question in our mind that upstream mitigation is critically important,

regardless of the cost. So long as it gets done. For decades, what happened in 2013 (or

2005 or 1932 or other years) has been absolutely known based on historical precedence

of much worse events (1883, 1897), but largely ignored. Time and again, the necessary

political will has not been sustained, if it was even ever mounted. Economically, socially,

environmentally — from any perspective, the “flood, rebuild, repeat” model simply cannot

stand. Far too much is now at stake as this City has grown from its original settlement at

Fort Calgary, at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. That some financial

benefit/cost modelling has been done by the Province to attempt to quantify at least the

financial aspect to the risk relative to Project costs is certainly helpful, but not

determinative of the need for mitigation, or even of the first priority Project to be

undertaken, notwithstanding that such modelling clearly points to the Springbank Project.

We are not talking about, after all, a piece of manufacturing machinery where calculating

net present values or internal rates of return is key. When it comes to upstream mitigation

strategies on both the Bow and the Elbow Rivers, the “do nothing, kick the can down the

road” approach maintains this City’s vulnerability to incalculable risks.

In our view, this was behind the Prentice Government’s decision to pursue the Springbank

Project – a holistic understanding of the issues and enough information to make a

decision to actually achieve a result. It was political leadership when so much had been

lacking to that point. Which is why we remain so baffled by ongoing assaults on aspects of

the IBI Study’s conclusions, as though altering some aspects of the underlying numbers

would produce such a change to the benefit/cost ratios as to override all the other

considerations that support the Springbank Project as the first priority, and thereby risk the

real possibility that no mitigation is achieved on the Elbow River. We’ve spoken to the IBI

Group about some of these challenged input numbers and feel that the analysis done to

arrive at them is entirely defensible, but at the end of the day these numbers don’t matter

if the end result is that a mitigation project isn’t actually completed. We’ve seen the same

basic criticisms raised in the media innumerable times, always with the sly innuendo that

because the IBI Study was not publically released at the time the Prentice Government

announced its support of the Springbank Project, that certainly the professionals involved

in the benefit/cost analysis, and presumably all study and work done on all three Projects

after September, was engineered to justify that announcement. That is of course

ridiculous and insulting to all those professionals and Provincial employees involved in this

work. We’ve also seen little desire in the media to really understand or inform the public as

to the larger perspective of the risks, the decades of failures to act, the real contingencies

and challenges to the McLean Creek Project, the weaknesses to the numbers in the IBI

Study relative to it, a deeper understanding of the studies published by the Province, and

many other subjects regarding this broader context. Instead, criticism appears to be intent

on supporting one perspective, sometimes using dated or non-public or anecdotal

information portrayed as fact, to justify what we consider to be suspect conclusions.

The dogged focus on challenging the benefit/cost outcomes reached in the IBI Study

simply misses the point. Few public infrastructure projects have seen such a focus, if a

benefit/cost analysis was even completed. Most are justified on the fairly straight forward

question of current cost, even if large, versus a future and much higher cost, to address

the inevitable foreseen need. And a project from that perspective may make complete

sense. There are numerous examples of this. And the McLean Creek Project is not

without significant questions of its own relative to cost and timing. What will the

construction costs to McLean Creek actually be after the many additional years of

environmental review it faces, assuming it is allowed to proceed at all? What are the

currently uncalculated costs to address the environmental impacts yet to be clearly

defined? And most critically, after what could be two election cycles by that time, will there

be political appetite, or even memory, to do so (unless of course Calgary suffers another

flood; which is a real possibility)? Is Calgary, or Bragg Creek/Redwood Meadows (for

which funding of local mitigation solutions had been earmarked and provided in part, but

not utilized) prepared to take those risks? And what are the total costs to this City and

Province in hard dollars and lost investment if that gamble doesn’t pay off in that time?

Perhaps the most analogous example in Canadian history to the upstream mitigation

challenges currently facing Calgary and Southern Alberta, is the “Red River Floodway” in

the Winnipeg region, originally derisively referred to as “Duff’s Ditch” after Premier Duff

Roblin who, despite criticism, built it in the mid-1960’s. A fascinating and detailed historical

account is provided here and, in many respects, mirrors Calgary’s current situation.

Duff’s Ditch was built in response to the “Great Flood” of 1950 which was described as

“one of the greatest natural disasters in Canadian history”, which cost over $125MM at

that time to repair flood damage. Like Calgary, Winnipeg’s downtown narrowly escaped

inundation. Some facts of particular note:

A $72.5MM capital expense was projected (amortized over 50 years at a 4%

discount rate) at a time when the population of all of Manitoba was only about

900,000 and the net Provincial annual revenue stood at $74MM. The final cost

was about $63MM and the Federal Government paid 60% to the Province’s 40%.

The build was the second largest earthmoving project to the Panama Canal. A

cost/benefit analysis was done prior to the commencement of the project and

showed a positive 1:2.73 ratio while saving a projected $14MM average annual

damage cost.

Hundreds of properties had to be expropriated in whole or in part across a wide

area of Southern Manitoba to facilitate construction. The target protection was to

the 1:165 year event.

The Floodway was first tested soon after completion in 1968 and many times

since, most severely in the 1997 “Flood of the Century” where more than 66,000

cubic meters per second of water were diverted (Niagara Falls flows at 2,400, the

same as Calgary at the Zoo in 2013). Yet the Floodway held with minimal damage

and it is estimated that it averted $4B in damages in that single 1997 event. Over

the years, the frequency and severity of flooding in Manitoba has been much more

than first anticipated and the Province is now upgrading the Floodway to a 1:700

year standard, spending over $600MM to do so.

Despite an initial $63MM cost (at that time), the Floodway has been estimated to

have averted over $32B in damages in the past 50 years (see here), with many

more decades of service to come. The actual realized cost/benefit ratio for the

single 1997 “Flood of the Century” event was 1:40. That is an incredible multiplier

and Duff’s Ditch is, arguably, the reason Winnipeg still exists today.

The following from the linked article says it all:

Tested under severe flood conditions, the Red River Floodway silenced its critics, proved

the sagacity of its proponents, and established beyond dispute the viability of the concept,

the efficacy of its design, and its almost inestimable worth in cost-benefit terms. The

floodway proved capable of controlling floodwaters even in excess of its design flood

function, and saved the federal government, the province, the municipality, and many local

property owners, a total of billions of dollars in expenditures that would otherwise have

been required for emergency flood abatement, flood relief, rebuilding, and clean-ups.

Although the original cost-benefit for the floodway project was estimated at 1:2.73

calculated over a fifty-year period of only emergency use during years of extraordinarily

high spring floods, the floodway was in operation twenty times during the 29 years prior to

1997 to divert threatening floodwaters past Winnipeg; and in but one year of almost

unprecedented flooding—during the Flood of the Century in 1997—yielded a cost-benefit

ratio of roughly 1:40, a phenomenal return on construction costs.

Closer to home, the Glenmore Reservoir was finished in 1932 for $3.6MM, and held back

flood waters that year just prior to its completion in the last major Spring flood on the

Elbow until 2005. In 2013, because the City rapidly drained the Reservoir in the few days

before the flood, and because of the pure good fortune that the rain stopped when it did,

the Glenmore muted a 1:185 year flood into a 1:90 year event, saving much of downtown

in the process. Now calculate that cost/benefit ratio.

What’s needed now is the political leadership to build the upstream mitigation this City

needs on the Elbow and the Bow Rivers, starting with the Springbank Project as the first

priority project. Make it happen, because it can happen, and years before the alternatives

(assuming they ever are built). Make it happen before the next election. Failure to do so

will be the same failure in governance that this City and Province has seen over decades,

and a shamefully missed opportunity. And then get on with other mitigation projects that

are required on the Elbow and Bow Rivers to full protect Calgary.

Your CRCAG Team

www.crcactiongroup.com | info@crcactiongroup.com |

Questions? questions@crcactiongroup.com

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