Driving east on the Trans-Canada Highway outside of Winnipeg it’s impossible not to catch sight of what is colloquially known as Duff’s Ditch.
Officially labelled the Red River Floodway, the 47-kilometre-long diversion was built between 1962 and 1968 under the watch of then Manitoba premier Duff Roblin to protect Winnipeg from being flooded by the Red River.
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The project cost $62.7 million — a price tag that, while shared between the province and federal government, was not much less than Manitoba’s entire gross domestic product. Needless to say, there was much opposition to the project, which, by the time of the 2013 floods in Calgary, had saved Manitobans $32 billion in flood-related damages, according to government estimates.
Are there parallels to be drawn with Calgary, specifically the lack of progress in terms of progress on upstream flood mitigation? If anything, the terrible flooding in Houston is a tragic reminder of the potential consequences of inaction should we continue to stall on putting critical mitigation structures in place.