The Mayor of Merritt is calling on the federal government to live up to promises it made to support communities that flooded in November 2021.

Mike Goetz’s comments come as Merritt is getting $2-million in provincial funding for flood mitigation work along the Coldwater River, which he says will get the ball rolling on a $167-million flood mitigation plan.

“I am really happy to see something, anything at this point,” Goetz said on NL Newsday.

“The province has stepped up for funds to get the plan done so we could actually make the application to [the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.] The province has been here quite a bit for us.”

Goetz says this particular money from the province will help protect Merritt’s wastewater treatment plant, which had failed during the atmospheric river storms in November 2021, forcing the evacuation of the entire city.

“Yes, $2 million doesn’t sound a lot but at least it allows us to now get started on the dyke reclamation and people in the community can actually see some work start to get done,” Goetz added.

“It will be a 600 metre dyke so in the event we ever have the situation again, our sewer plant will be absolutely protected, and the reason we are [going ahead with that work] is its city owned property, and that’s about the only place we can use this funding for.”

Goetz says he’s hoping this contribution from the provincial government will now spur the federal government to come to the table as well.

“Don’t come here five-times, make a photo-op, and say how terrible everything is, and then go back to Ottawa and then pretend you’ve never heard of this town before,” he added, noting Merritt will be applying for DMAF funding for the third time.

While applications for the federal program were recently opened up again, Goetz says changes to it mean Merritt can only get 40-per cent of what they were initially looking for.

“If you listen to Minister [Bill] Blair, he makes a suggestion that Merritt needs to not only help themselves but they need to find private investors along with government funding and that was on a – he’s made that statement so – I thought it was a little odd,” Goetz added on NL Newsday. “I don’t know how you do that. What do you do go up to Walmart and say hey you guys got $5-million? You want to invest in a dyke?”

“You’re not going to get private investors to invest in this. It seems a little odd that that would happen. I don’t know how you think something like that would ever happen so we’ll just continue on,” Goetz added.

“Like I explained to the Minister – the money that you’re giving back to us – we’re not getting a loan. This is money that the taxpayers have paid to you and it is actually our money so you might want to consider giving some of it back to us and I shouldn’t have to come with my hat in my hand saying hey can you give us some of the money that we gave you back to us?”

Goetz says they plan to “keep pushing” the government for disaster relief funding, noting a community like Merritt is not able to come up with that amount of money on its own.

“You promised $500-million to the Ukraine for weaponization, you promised $850-(million) to third-world countries at the COP 15 or whatever it was,” Goetz added. “You know what? Princeton doesn’t have – they’re still on a boil water 14-months later and we have no dykes. How much of a third world country do you want to talk about?”

“I’m hoping that they will take a cue here and start working with us so that we can get these dykes and get people protected before we come into freshet, which isn’t going to happen by the way, but at least we can hope that we can get there in the next little while,” he added.

– With files from Brett Mineer