Kamloops city staff will be applying for up to $750,000 in grant funding to do flood mitigation work at Riverside Park.
Capital projects manager Darren Crundwell explained at city council the park is the first area to flood when the river starts to overflow its banks.
“The area we’re speaking about in Riverside Park flooding over the one-in-20-year event causes major concerns. This area in Riverside Park is the location that has the primary sanitary trunk main running through it. There’s also other significant sanitary infrastructure, lift stations,” Crundwell says.
“The project primarily includes removal of dangerous trees at the location of the pier, approximately 100 metres west. Some grading, reconstructing the Rivers Trail because we have to remove that. Raising the elevation of the bank there to protect it against flooding, and then just replacement of infrastructure that we’ve disturbed during the construction process.”
Crundwell says responded to concern from councillor Denis Walsh about raising the bank, saying it would only be by about one-to-two feet.
“We will grade it back and make sure it’s daylighted and looks good with the rest of the park. It is a pretty large area, so to raise that elevation, I don’t think we’ll have an issue there.”
The grant funding would come from the Union of B.C. Municipalities’ Community Emergency Preparedness Fund.