Alberta government denies disaster recovery assistance to Cold Lake residents

Alberta has denied disaster recovery assistance to Cold Lake, Alberta residents for flood damage sustained during a storm event in late June 2011, telling the Edmonton Journal that the storm did not qualify as a 1-in-25-year event.
Instead, a hydrologist contracted by the province noted, data showed the precipitation levels that caused flooding and sewer back-ups in the community was more on the order of a 1-in-10-year event.
“It’s unfortunate, but according to the province’s guidelines, this storm did not meet the severity criteria to receive the funding,” Cold Lake’s chief administrative officer Kevin Nagoya said in a statement posted online. “We feel that the storm was more severe than the province’s data is depicting. However the City of Cold Lake does not have any active rain gauges in the community that can provide evidence otherwise.
“Unfortunately some of our liftstations, storm sewers and sanitary sewers could not keep up with the volume of rain [that] resulted in a surcharge of many storm sewers and sanitary sewers, causing streets to flood and many residents’ basements to back up with sewage.”