Aerial view of 2021 flooding in Merritt/via City of Merritt
The Mayor of Merritt is fuming, after receiving word it was the format of the application which led to his community being rejected for federal dollars to help prevent further flooding.
Mike Goetz, in meeting with officials who administered the now-closed Disaster Adaptation and Mitigation Fund, says he has been told their application for money to upgrade the diking in Merritt was not even considered.
He says it’s because their proposal for $64 million dollars was broken down into three parts, rather than one, which the application required.
“So for three years of working hard… we spent $383,000 on this DMAF… covered every single thing, including cost recovery… everything,” proclaimed an exacerbated Goetz as part of an interview with Radio NL the day after the meeting with the federal officials. “It wasn’t even looked at. It was rejected on a technicality.”
Goetz says his administration was told by provincial officials to break up the application in an effort to try to secure some portion of funding, should some other part of it be rejected.
“We did exactly what we were told to do through provincial guidance. That was them being guided by federal guidance. And then it went to DMAF, and DMAF said no, technicality, out it goes. Never even looked at it. Went right in the garbage can.”
Goetz also says they weren’t afforded an opportunity to correct the bureaucratic oversight.
“I said: Well if it wasn’t going the way you wanted, why didn’t you give us a call? We [they] had it for 11 months, you could have asked us: hey, there’s something missing, can you fix it up. And they said, ‘well we don’t do that. We don’t call back. We don’t do that kind of thing’.”
Goetz says he now intends to take his concerns over this directly to Ottawa.
“We’ve asked for an appeal process, because somewhere along the way, something was lost in translation,” said Goetz.
He says he’s also requested a list of the projects which were funded through the over $2 billion federal program.
“I told them I want to see a complete breakdown of every community that got money and what it was for,” said Goetz. “I warned, them. I better not see that this went to some hack in Ontario that got his lake dock adjusted so it doesn’t under if the water gets high. This better be legitimate stuff.”
The meeting with the federal officials on Wednesday came after Goetz, as well as the Mayors of Abbotsford and Princeton, held a joint news conference, outlining their frustration with all being rejected for their respective flood mitigation programs by Ottawa.
The atmospheric event of November, 2021 saw the Coldwater River through Merritt spill its banks, forcing the City of some 7,000 to fully evacuate for over a week.
No work to repair the failed diking system has been done since then.
