It’s very interesting and so appropriate that Don Braid cites the clear parallels between the risks to the drawn-out “consultation” processes associated with the Trans Mountain Pipelines and prior arena deal, to the multi-year delays to the completion of the Springbank Off-stream Diversion Reservoir (originally scheduled to be in service LAST YEAR).
- Calgary Herald: Braid: Please councillors, give arena deal a quick yes or no
The key difference is that one of these three projects is urgently needed for public safety and to avoid loss of life, and to protect the livelihoods and properties of tens of thousands of Calgarians. And it’s not an arena.
The very few opponents to SR1 have been surprisingly successful in employing the pipeline delay playbook to add years to the project in the hope that successive governments might come to a conclusion other than those taken by the prior government: that SR1 is, based on the science and study, the best first Elbow river upstream mitigation strategy to avoid another 2013 flood event. They obfuscate with relatively manageable concerns when weighed against avoiding a repeat of the colossal public, economic and environmental catastrophe that was the 2013 flood.
In fact, it is the very success of the SR1 opponents that have convinced us that if it isn’t completed, no upstream mitigation on the Elbow would ever be achievable. The McLean Creek project will have many more and varied stakeholders and opponents given it is on environmentally more sensitive public land, will cost much more than its very stale current price tag (that has not been subject to the necessary revisions that SR1 has over time), and will still be subject to First Nations consultation including with Tsuut’ina (which has resisted the completion of the Bragg Creek berms now moving toward construction to protect that community).
So to the federal CEAA, provincial NRCB, and the proponent Alberta Transportation, JUST PLEASE GET ON WITH IT.
The decision to build SR1 has been made, many times over. Tens of thousands of people need it and support it. And every lost month presents a quantifiable risk to Albertans. This province can not bear the consequences of yet another failed infrastructure project, particularly one to protect lives, livelihoods and property like SR1. And this city can’t be that feckless to see it die.
Regards,
Your CRCAG Board