Request for feedback: Room for the River Pilot in the Bow River Basin

“Bow River” by Tim Redpath is licenced under CC BY 2.0. No changes were made to photograph.

In the 18 months since the 2013 floods occurred in Alberta, a wide range of mitigation options for the Bow River Basin have been identified, studied, and implemented by the Government of Alberta (GoA), municipalities, non-government organizations, and others.

With a number of options still under consideration, the GoA announced in the fall of 2014 that it wanted to look more closely at the approach taken by the Netherlands to manage flooding in the Rhine River branches, called the Room for the River program. A pilot project was undertaken in the Bow Basin to consider the Dutch program and measures and the extent to which they could be adapted and applied here to reduce vulnerability of people and infrastructure and improve the overall environmental quality of the Bow and Elbow rivers.

The report below was submitted to GoA on December 19th, 2014 for their review and consideration. It includes an overview of the pilot and the resulting advice to GoA. Many organizations and individuals contributed to this pilot. In this continuing spirit of collaboration, the report is being broadly shared and further comments are welcomed. 

These reports are being published on the WaterPortal in order to make the information widely available to the public. Please read the report and feel free to share it with others. If you would like to offer comment, please do so via e-mail or in the comments box below. The WaterPortal will ensure your comments or suggestions are communicated to the authors and recipients of the report. Comments and feedback will be accepted until January 31^st. 

Click here to download Room for the River Pilot in the Bow River Basin: Advice to the Government of Alberta.