Rob: I really liked the piece that your colleague Evan wrote in the Rocky Mountain Outlook this week about Exshaw residents rallying together amid groundwater flooding. It’s a great  human examination on the amount of work that it’s taken for the residents of that area. Nine-year-old Mikaela Smith watching the pumps, people working to exhaustion just to make sure that this groundwater is out of people’s basements. And yet it’s still taking a pretty big human toll in that community.

Tanya: A lot of dedication and a lot of community spirit, but as things are reopening with the economy people are having to go back to work. So there is a need in the community for additional support. I would suggest anyone who is interested in helping, there is a volunteer coordinator helping out. You can find information on the MD of Bighorn Facebook group. You need rubber boots.

Rob:  Preferably floral ones like Mikaela Smith has. The MD of Bighorn is dealing with an unprecedented situation right now. They’ve never experienced groundwater levels in people’s basements like this, and there’s a real lack of understanding why it’s so bad this year. It sounds like they’re hiring an expert to find out.

Tanya:  MD of Bighorn officials moved fast on this one. I know there’s been some frustration in the community where people have felt that there wasn’t a full understanding of what was going on and the potential of where this is actually coming from. I tend to caution against speculating about cause and effect before there’s data and details, but we do have a situation in Exshaw where mitigation has been installed and now something is different. So a hydrogeologist has been hired. In fact, they’ve been sole sourced and it was done, prior to council voting because of the emergency situation.  I think another factor that was really important for the MD of Bighorn council is that this hydrogeologist is completely independent from anyone involved in the design and building of the flood mitigation.

 

A Gofundme has been set up to assist Exshaw residents who need it with financial support, click here to donate.

Filed under: Exshaw, Mountain Insider