Valley Welcomes Premier

Written by Bob Brown on Monday, 02 September 2013

The Drumheller Valley welcomed the premier this weekend.  Alison Redford came to town as part of a government tour of the Canadian Badlands that also included Stettler and Rosebud.

As expected, she had much to say about flood remediation and efforts to prevent further disasters.

“The mitigation that has to happen here in this community is very important,” said the premier, “You’ll know that this week we put in basically a special dispensation to ensure that even though parts of the Drumheller business community were on a floodway that we’re going to be able to put community mitigation projects in place to ensure that in the future, we can reduce the impact, and that’s our first priority.”

Redford figures it could cost as much as five billion dollars over the next ten years to build all of the infrastructure needed. Redford believes the first priority, over the next two years, is to make sure they’ve put in place the recovery, rebuilding and mitigation to prevent future flood impacts in southern Alberta.

In the long term, the government is going to look differently at mitigation, water storage and water management, and she says they are committed to getting that done as soon as possible.

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