‘Merritt will flood again’; Federal funding denial has Merritt looking for answers

In the days, weeks and months following the 2021 atmospheric river that flooded and forced the evacuation of Merritt, a cavalcade of heavy-hitting politicians came to the community and pledged assistance in rebuilding.

“We don’t want to allow process to hold us back from the right outcome. When we hear the urgency, we all have to be compelled and resolved to respond appropriately to help these people as quickly as we can,” said then-Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair while touring Merritt on March 13, 2022.

More than two years after, the community has been told federal assistance, in the form of disaster mitigation and adaptation funding (DMAF), will not be arriving.

“Here we sit almost three years later and there hasn’t been any work done on any of these dikes, from the very morning you stood on it and watched that interview. It is exactly the same — nothing has changed. If urgency is part of the whole thing, I don’t know when they plan to get urgent because we are three years in now,” said Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz.

The City of Merritt submitted a 500-plus page report, and despite the ministry outlining in an email to CFJC News how it offers answers to city questions, Goetz highlighted a lack of communication, saying he doubts it was ever even read.

“Infrastructure Canada communicates reasons for decisions directly to applicants, and always offers to answer any questions they might have,” reads a statement from Micaal Ahmed, communications manager for the Office of the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.

“I have a quarter of my community that is unsafe and could very well be flooded again if things go wrong,” stated Goetz. “For us to just idly sit here and go, ‘Hey, that’s great. We tried our best and off we go,’ that’s just not going to work here. And they do not (communicate) because they had 11 months to say they had problems with the application and they said nothing so obviously they were okay with it, if they actually read it.”

Without dike funding, the city of Merritt sits more susceptible to flood today than even before 2021.

“As much as I hate to say it, the engineers are telling us that Merritt will flood again. We don’t know at the level that Merritt will flood again, but Merritt will flood again,” said Merritt’s Director of Flood Recovery and Mitigation, Sean Strang.

The Ministry of Infrastructure also stated projects are assessed on several factors including return on investment (ROI), something Merritt had in spades.

“All projects submitted for funding under DMAF are assessed on the information provided in the application, particularly when determining hazard risk, resilience and return on investment,” continued the statement from Ahmed and the ministry.

“We have a 32-page study on return on investment, that says the ROI on this project is 7-to-1. Either the federal government and the provincial government can wait until a flood happens and pay seven times the amount of money or they can pay to mitigate it and not have that happen in the first place,” said Strang.

While the likelihood of snowpack-related flooding is low, the city and its residents are ready to act, with or without permission, to properly protect homes.

“We are not going to allow people to suffer secondary flooding because of inaction of government,” said Goetz. “We will pick up the pieces after that. You want to level fines at a community that is trying to protect its citizens because [the government isn’t] getting off the pot? Well we will do it for them, and we’ll see where that goes, so we will protect our community if we have to.”

Along with Merritt, Princeton and Abbotsford were also denied funding through the DMAF stream.

“I am currently working with Mayor Goetz and Mayor Coyne (of Princeton) to ascertain why they have been denied this public safety grant,” said Central Okanagan-Similkimeen-Nicola MP Dan Albas. “After my invitation to appear at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities Committee, Members of Parliament from all parties recommended to the Trudeau government that smaller, vulnerable communities like Merritt and Princeton should be prioritized for disaster adaption funding. This is after both communities spent thousands in local taxpayers’ money to build an application that was encouraged by the federal government. While this initial denial is disappointing, our communities are not safer if we collectively shrug and accept this as the final word.”