After several months of waiting, the Mayor of Merritt says they are preparing their application for the Disaster Mitigation and Assistance Fund (DMAF).

The Federal Government re-opened DMAF applications on its website as of Monday, January 16.

It comes following word from the City of Merritt back in November, where Chief Finance Officer Sean Strang told RadioNL the Feds silently closed the fund, which is the only program that would help pay for large-scale land buyout and dyke structures.

Now that DMAF is “Back in Action,” Mike Goetz says it’ll be the third application the City has sent, requesting funding from this federal program, to help pay for its flood mitigation plan — which comes at a price tag of $167 Million.

“What we end up doing is we throw down a total price for both ends of the town, which is around $165 million,” he explained. “But, we’re not going to die on that mountain. We will work on a situation where you give us X amount a year; like a payment program. That is fine.”

Ultimately, Goetz stresses they need at least “some money soon” to ensure remediation work can begin on areas still using sandbagging for flood protection.

“We have a trailer park that doesn’t even have a bank anymore. The only thing that is protecting them is the temporary sandbagging that the military did a year ago, and we can’t have that,” he said.

“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t care what they give us, as long as they give us something so we can actually start to reclaim, and then we will work on costs and price after that.”

Once work begins to redo the dyking system with the more permanent solution planned, Goetz suggests cost adjustments will likely surface.

“Just like anything else, as they start to redo the dykes, they’ll find certain spots that don’t need to be shorn up and others that do, so there’ll be some cost adjustments as they work along there.”

As long as DMAF is open and is willing to move forward, Goetz says they will continue working on flood protection plans.

“I’m open to anything at this point. I’m pretty desperate.”

According to the Canadian Government’s website, the new DMAF intake will remain open until noon on July 19 (PST).