Dear editor:
How did we get here? Ghost Reservoir has been almost emptied, property owners have lost tens of millions of dollars in real estate value, water wells have gone dry, large areas of wetlands have been drained and wildlife devastated, recreational boating has been shut down, and amazingly the NDP government has approved paying millions in compensation to TransAlta to shut down a important source of clean electricity and to replace it with electricity generated with fossil fuels.
Despite having spent hundreds of millions of dollars, Calgary is not the slightest bit safer from a flood than before and they are still actively building major projects in flood zones, upstream residents are angry and upset, their lives and finances catastrophically damaged without even an attempt at consultation with them prior to decisions being made.
Let's start with 'the flood': it was the seventh major flood in the last 100 years and was by far not the largest; even as a child in the ‘60s I knew that downtown Calgary had been a meter under water in the past, floods are nothing new, there just had not been one in a while. Despite this common knowledge, the City of Calgary and the Province of Alberta continued to allow construction of buildings on flood plains in Calgary and surrounding communities and completely failed to build infrastructure to protect them.
In the week prior to the flood the snow pack was significantly above normal (this was being monitored by the Alberta Government), ground water saturation was 100 per cent (water was literally bubbling out of the ground in places never seen before (I would hope the Alberta Government was monitoring this), the Bow River was flowing at levels significantly above normal (this was being monitored by the Alberta Government), in the second half of June precipitation levels had been well above normal and five days prior to the flood, meteorological reports identified a unusually heavy precipitation event moving toward Alberta. Local residents of Ghost Lake had been noting the unusually high water level in the reservoir (this was being monitored by the Alberta Government); they had never seen it that high before in mid June.
TransAlta has stated that although the water was unusually high, it was within acceptable parameters (parameters allow for variation depending on conditions - considering the factors I just listed, the water levels should have been at the low side of the parameters, not the high side). Although the higher-than-normal water levels would have made virtually no difference to the severity of the flood, TransAlta clearly messed up, but where was Alberta Environment, a question that nobody seems to want to ask. Clearly Alberta Environment was asleep at the switch, not just at Ghost Lake but everywhere - why were there no warnings despite significant advance notice, why has an independent investigation not been done? Since the flood there have been a number of questionable actions and decisions made, are these decisions being made by the same group of incompetent members of Alberta Environment, why are they still employed by the Alberta government?
Immediately after the flood, a decision was made to keep Ghost Lake levels below normal. The lake level was not brought back up and it stayed below normal levels all summer and through the winter; this was done without any consultation with affected Ghost Lake community members. Although not an especially rational decision as the flood was over, local residents could understand the reluctance to raise the water, as the flood had been quite traumatic. Because of the low water levels, property values plummeted, large areas of wetlands were drained and the usual recreational water activities were limited. When contacted, Alberta Environment stated that this would be a one-year trial; at no time did Alberta Environment come to talk to affected residents when they expressed their concerns.
When the local PC MLA was contacted, he responded that it would only be a one-year experiment, so once again local residents quite reasonably waited another year.
This spring, once again without any consultation with affected residents the water levels in Ghost Lake were dropped to unprecedented low levels, so low that residents’ water wells went dry for the first time ever, a small fortune was spent moving fish from low lying areas to the Bow River, wetlands became dried out killing their rich diversity of creatures and were turned into baked mud flats, thus driving away all the waterfowl that fed and nested in the area, local beaver nests were left high and dry to either move on or die, the smell of square kilometres of rotting lake bottom infiltrated every home, and of course, all recreation on the water came to a halt.
There seems to be little basis for the extreme lowering of the lake level. No qualified professional that I have consulted feels that it would have any appreciable affect on reducing the severity of a flood. Attempts to contact Alberta Environment by affected homeowners were ignored and only a couple of letters were released stating that the decision was made and would not change. Information provided in these letters was at times clearly false. Requests for the names and qualifications of the decision makers were denied; requests for the factual basis for the decision was denied; questions, such as why other reservoirs were left a high levels while Ghost Lake was dropped were not answered – there was a atmosphere of secrecy and absolute contempt for affected residents, this attitude still remains in place.
Construction of Ghost Lake Reservoir began in 1928 in response to boom times and the rapidly increasing need and cost of electricity in Cochrane and Calgary. The dam was not built with any consideration of flood control for those down stream – it was solely built to produce cheap electrical power. For operational reasons, because it took time to manually open the spillways the lake level was lowered in the spring during high runoff periods, the level was then brought back up starting in early June and was full again by the end of June. The land for the lake was acquired by ‘the Queen’, land owners had no choice but to sell but received some protection as a caveat was placed on their titles which allowed them access to the water including building of structures such as fences, boathouse and docks. When the land title was then transferred to Calgary Power (TransAlta) by the Queen at a nominal cost, the caveat remained in place on the titles of waterfront owners and still exists to this day.
Along with the dam development in the booming 1920’s, grandiose plans were developed for Ghost Lake, there were to be waterfront hotels, beaches with rows of concessions and lots of cottages by the water. The onset of the depression and subsequent World War delayed these plans. Many believe the construction of Ghost Dam was a depression era project, this is false but as a result of the poor economic times when it was completed and filled in 1932 it was not used to generate power for a number of years. The busy Trans Canada highway ran alongside Ghost Lake and there was a significant community in the area including private residences, businesses, churches, orphanage, youth hostel, Boy Scout camp, etc. The Boy Scouts brought a sailboat from Vancouver, it was so large that it had to be brought by rail and unloaded next to the lake, Spray Lake Sawmills was located where the current provincial campground is now and they floated logs down from Kananaskis and then used a barge to tow the logs the length of the lake. The Calgary Ice Boat club began sailing on the lake in the 1930s. As planned, Ghost Lake was an important waterfront recreational community from the beginning.
In the 1950s the economy was again doing well and it was decided to develop the long planned waterfront recreational community of Ghost Lake. Calgary Power sold a parcel of their land along the waterfront and with the support of the Alberta Government the Summer Village of Ghost Lake was created. Although a few homes already existed on the waterfront it became a well-planned waterfront community of about 100 lots. It was surveyed, lots were auctioned off, beaches and breakwaters were built. Until the mid 1980s the residents of Ghost Lake enjoyed normal use of the lake but after 50 years the dam was showing signs of wear, for operational reasons the lake level was kept lower in the spring but was still returned to normal by July 2001. After studying the situation it was determined that the dam would be rebuilt at a cost of $28M, new safety requirements stated that it must be upgraded from its 200 year flood event capacity to handle a 1,000 year flood event. After three years of construction the new dam included remote controlled spillways that could be opened rapidly with a push of a button, thus there was no longer an operational requirement to lower the water in the spring. Residents welcomed the announcement by Trans Alta that as of 1989 there would only be a small reduction in level of short duration in the spring and that the water would be fully raised by July 01. This lasted for two years until Alberta Environment once again became involved, as downstream communities had failed to upgrade to the 1,000-year level, Trans Alta reduced water levels by an additional meter lower in the spring. Despite this additional lowering of water levels they were still high enough even in June to use docks and to boat and by July 01 were always brought up to normal levels. Unfortunately the downstream communities of Cochrane and Calgary failed to take any action in upgrading infrastructure to handle a 1,000 year flood and against all common sense continued to build numerous communities on flood plains, the Alberta government happily handed out exemptions to permit this. Now that that these communities are at risk, rather than build the infrastructure required to protect them Alberta Environment has implemented a nonsensical plan to drain Ghost Lake reservoir to protect communities downstream – unfortunately it will not work. The reservoir does not have even close to the required capacity to provide protection. This plan also does not take into account the geotechnical risks that could lead to damaging the dam if the water level is raised by 35 feet in a matter of hours.
The answer to the flood problem is to build dikes along the Bow River, this will be very expensive but needs to happen immediately as there is no doubt another flood will come and it may be much, much worse than the last one. Municipalities should have done this 50 years ago and are being irresponsible in their contraction of delaying the expenditures. A flood tax on properties built in flood zones could be used to fund this and the construction of dikes. Despite the hundreds of millions spent so far nothing has been done to actually prevent a repeat of the damage if there is another flood. The Alberta government had no problem spending hundreds of millions of dollars compensating those that chose to build in flood plains but will not even consider the effect of their expensive misguided efforts on those upstream. Even more money is being spent on senseless repair projects that will be once again destroyed in the next flood and they are continuing to allow construction on flood plains, one example is the downtown EauClaire area. There should be a halt to all construction on flood plains including downtown Calgary until flood protection issues are resolved.
It is time to replace the Alberta Environment decision makers with qualified, effective professionals with strong real world industry experience – amateur hour needs to end. Alberta Environment needs to answer the many questions that have been submitted to them, release the rationale for their decisions and data that they have based it on. They also need to publicly report who is making these decisions and what their professional qualifications are. Finally Ghost Lake residents need to be compensated for the three years they have put up with Alberta Environments foolishness and if necessary bought out, if the Alberta Government could afford to pay Calgary land owners who built on flood zones up to $7M per home, they can afford to buy out Ghost Lake residents if they decide to go ahead with their senseless plan to lower the water level of Ghost Lake permanently. Ghost Lake residents have every reason to expect that the lake should be operated as intended; many have invested their life savings on this reasonable assumption.
An independent inquiry should be implemented to investigate the actions of Alberta Environment before, during and after the flood. Ghost Lake should be used for its intended purpose for which it is designed, operation as a hydroelectric facility producing cheap clean energy. To do this, it should be operated as designed with the goal of having a ‘full pool’ water level all year to maximize electrical output. Operation as a full pool facility also allows for quality recreational and environmental benefits. Furthermore, it is long overdue time to manage the lake appropriately, motorized watercraft should be restricted to 10km per hour except in designated areas for motorboats, waterskiing and jet skiing, these areas need to be away from vulnerable shore lines and wetlands. This would allow sailboats, sailboards, canoeists and kayaker’s peace and safety while still allowing the motorized segment of society to continue to roar around. All campers and boaters on the lake should be required to have a way of collecting their sewage; either a porta potty or a holding tank, hundreds of people defecting and urinating in Calgary's water supply should end. It is also long overdue to ban motorized vehicles from the ice in the winter, vehicles falling through the ice has become a common occurrence; it is not permitted on any other lake upstream of Calgary.
Andre Vryheid has been a resident of the Summer Village if Ghost Lake for 48 years, he is an avid sailor in summer and winter, skates, motorboats and enjoys watching the varied wildlife on the lake. He has always been interested in the history of the area, which precedes Calgary but still considers himself a newcomer, as there are many who have been there much longer.
Andre Vryheid
