Financial Post- Terence Corcoran: A human mistake — Why the B.C. floods are not a climate change issue
Before We Lost the Lake is filled with evidence of the seemingly futile hundred-year human struggle to tame Sumas Lake by draining it of water and turning it into fertile prairie, a never-ending battle to build and re-build dikes and infrastructure in the face of recurring flood episodes of varying magnitudes going back centuries. Sumas and areas south of the United States border have experienced so-called 100-year floods in 1908-1909 and 1932. Floods ranked as 35-year events occurred in 1945, 1949,1955,1975, and 1990. At least a dozen others are on the record.
Despite recurring floods over the past century, the political belief that the flood risk had been or soon could be brought under control prevailed. It has long proved to be a false hope, accompanied by persistent warnings from engineers and others.
Water always finds its level and its way to wherever it needs to go.
Yeah, but if we tax people more, it’ll be less of a problem! ( for a couple of reasons)
Make that seasons. 😉
And all the political parties at the emergency session in parliament, agreed that the floods were caused by global warming. The stupid runs deep in this country.
This country runs on stupidity.
Make no mistake, the flooded-out residents of BC will gladly pay more taxes with what little money they have left.
For the Earth!
The Sumas area is the New Orleans of B.C. Whenever you hear morons yammering about some event being the result of “climate change”, you should IMMEDIATELY do your research into the history. The climate change fascists always use such events of “proof” of their delusions much like solar eclipses were used by ancient charlatans to put fear into naive local populations.
The same thing was done with the 2013 flood in Calgary and hailstorm in 2020.
Ocean levels have always risen and fell throughout Earth’s history. During the Pleistocene, the ocean levels were a lot lower than now, and as they rose, animals like mammoths were trapped on islands like Malta and Sicily, where their bones were found.
It is believed that the legends of the cyclops were inspired when the ancient Greeks found those mammoth skulls.
A similar situation is Holland Marsh in Ontario who went through the same learning experience. Redundant high volume pumps, canal dredging and dike upgrades went a long way to making sure the painful lessons of ’54 wasn’t repeated.
However, as Thomas said, water is going to do what it does and if your house is in the way when there’s a lot of it…oh well.
King Canute knew the limitation of his power, the climate doomsters do not
also:
here is a simple explanation of 100-year flood
https://youtu.be/EACkiMRT0pc
“Normal Distribution” also applies to intelligence but that is a forbidden topic.
I live a couple hundred kms east of this area, and much to my amazement, I have yet to hear anyone linking this flooding to “climate change”. I say “amazement”, because I know it is now SOP for eco-tards to blame all bad weather on “climate change”.
Listening to the daily rantings and ravings of these eco-tards, you would think that before the Industrial Revolution, the wind never, ever blew hard and rain never, ever fell heavy. Jeez, I believe hurricane records alone completely debunk their entire BS “increasing severe weather” narrative.
Now I understand that Nancy Pelosi just spent $12 million on an oceanside mansion in Florida. Awful generous of her to volunteer to be one of the first to be wiped out by climate change. Now that is commitment!
My grandfather settled in the lowest part of Sumas Prairie (aka “Former Sumas Lake) in 1936 because he could afford it. Farmland there was $60 an acre and it was $300 an acre in higher areas less prone to flooding. The land had recently flooded when an ice storm took out power for the pumps at Barrowtown, and several of the original settlers “bailed out”.
A key difference then was that politicians weren’t so stupid (or diabolical) to blame a flood on climate change.
My solution would be to build a dike along the border between Vedder Mountain and Huntington, and install flow regulation on the Sumas River. Then Whatcom County will be more motivated to make sure the Nooksak stays in its channel instead of flowing across “open prairie” towards the Fraser watershed when it overtops its northern bank.
I don’t think the armchair engineers that say Sumas lake should never have been drained are making any more sense than the gadfly politicians and activists who say this flood was caused by climate change. It’s about like saying the Netherlands shouldn’t have farms.
Climate change is intangible. This flood was caused by nasty weather, just like all the previous ones. Sometimes it’s the surge after delayed runoff in the Fraser watershed hundreds of kilometers upstream because of a cool spring and a high snow pack (1894, 1948), sometimes it’s ice storms followed by rainstorms and no backup power for the pumps (ca. 1935), and the last two times it has been the Nooksak in Washington State overtopping its northern bank (1990, 2021). Those are all tangible.
With regard to the so-called Fraser flooding into Sumas, I don’t think its dike has been breached since 1948, and then only the Chilliwack side of the Vedder was affected; not the Abbotsford side.
Thanks for the post, good information. My wife and I went on many bicycle rides around Sumas Prairie and the Vedder Canal last summer. It’s very productive-looking land.
This seems like an extraordinary event to me. The last major flood was 30 years ago, and it wasn’t as bad as this one. Most floods are in the spring when heavy rains combine with snowmelt; I don’t remember a flood in any other season. And then there’s the flooding around Merritt, unlike anything I’ve ever heard of. The Coquihalla Highway opened 35 years ago and AFAIK never had any damage like this.
1990 on Nov 9th the wife and I drove down the Coquihalla into Hope just before they closed it. We couldn’t believe the water flow down the roadway and the boulders and even trees moving in the flow on the highway … scared the shit out of us for a few miles.
Sunday morning Nov 11th the trans Canada was flooded and closed at Abbotsford since the dike broke and we had to travel to our flight out of Vancouver on the northside of the Fraser.
Not as bad as this November but very close.
It rained steady all 3 days we were in the Fraser valley as it usually does in Nov ….especially in La Nina years.
Welcome to the 21st century, Terence.
Politician’s expertise doesn’t often extend beyond getting votes and increasing their net worth while in public office. Engineers, otoh, actually have useful skills that are beneficial to humanity.
If you start with the idea that politicians are stupid and corrupt, then you can on rare occasion be pleasantly surprised when you happen upon a politician with intelligence and integrity.
Climate change is the biggest canard on the FLOOD PLAIN! The dimwit political class have completely failed to recognize that they live on the WET COAST in a RAIN FOREST…so you plan or engineer for the 100 year flood if you are looking AHEAD and cognizant of where you are domiciled. Why should one have to explain to the moron political class that you live in a RAIN FOREST near a FLOOD PLAIN? Well and truly we are surrounded and led by IDIOTS!
“The process of coming up with a plan began with the 1990 flood, described as a major 35-year event, but after almost 35 years of planning — and at least 24 engineering studies and countless agency reports — the three levels of government responsible for mitigating flood risk had failed to come up with a plan.”
The political class have had all the studies and plans to mitigate for ages. However, the political class are less than do nothing fart catchers enamored of their own authority; and have nary a competent idea of what to do.
So the political class do what they do best: THEY DO NOTHING!
The political class want to do nothing, unless their is ample GRAFT in it for THEM.
The first mistake is to believe that the government is there to “serve the people”.
My father, the hydro-electric engineer, laughs and weeps from Heaven’s Gate; “Oh what have you idiots engineered?”
And the answer comes back: “NOTHING!”
Oh yes, and when the next flood comes, as it surely will, the government will come and SAVE YOU; but only in your wildest and most fevered DREAMS!
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
This reminds me of an interesting article about Lake Powell and what a disaster damning it apparently is. It seems much of the western US water system has been mangled by over-engineering at great taxpayer expense. Typical of government building projects, the failure of one project is used as pressure for more building.
https://gizmodo.com/its-time-to-drain-lake-powell-1848003413
And your university course work in geography, geology, hydrology, geomorphology, atmospheric sciences, hydro-electric engineering are what exactly? And we should listen to UnMe’s “back to the cave” screed for what exact reason; other than the proverbial and exceedingly tired “Save the Planet”?
Further, the topic posted was about FLOODING, not the LACK of MOISTURE… 🙂
Are you asserting that comedians make good engineers?
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
RTFA
Here is the Lake Mead site …. it will soon start to fill and it is looking like 2021 – 2022 will be an above average year for moisture which is typical of a La Nina winter. Don’t forget that the droughts always end in floods when the rains return … remember when the Oroville dam almost washed out after the last “perma drought” http://redgreenandblue.org/2018/09/18/california-dam-almost-failed-spectacularly-last-year-itll-cost-1-billion-fix/?share=google-plus-1
Enjoy http://mead.uslakes.info/Level/
But the CTV news anchor lady said it was due to climate change! I heard her while looking at pictures of the flood…can’t believe they are still pushing that.
My daughter and grandkids just missed being trapped, stopped for gas in Abbotsford when the lights/power went off. Decided to turn back to the Island and flew out of Victoria back home YYC
The fertile soils of the Fraser valley bottom are all a result of past flooding and deposition, likely by many hundreds of events since the last glaciation. CAGW hysteria is big business wallowing in rent seeking bounty. Hysterics must claim their rents by first earning them.
Just man ignoring the planet. Thinking he can control it.
The biggest problem IMO is that the people moving into a flood plain … have no idea they just moved into a flood plain.
I bought a raw slab of wood, 47,000 years old. Currently the place of origin is a fertile farming area. At some point, however, there will be another mud slide. My future relatives will be able order a Kauri table and get a free tractor axle.
https://kaurivault.com/
Point about the age of the wood is, that is how long the valley has been flooding and land-sliding.