Four massive water pumps working to keep a low-lying community in British Columbia from devastating floods is shining a light on a larger, Canada-wide issue.
Experts say infrastructure across the Canada was not built to withstand the impacts of climate change and the increasing severity of extreme weather events.
On Wednesday, Mayor of Abbotsford, B.C. Henry Braun told a news conference that the Barrowtown Pump Station which is struggling to keep Sumas Prairie from completely flooding was working at “maximum capacity.”
Officials issued an emergency evacuation order on Tuesday, warning that the pumps – which are taking on extra water due to flooding across B.C. and in Washington State – could fail, having potentially “catastrophic” impacts on the community.
Across B.C., the flooding, landslides and strong winds have displaced thousands from their homes.
The situation in the lower mainland of B.C. is an example of how infrastructure decisions and buildings built for “yesterday’s risks and hazards” are “not going to cut it in the 21st century,” Dylan Clark, a senior research associate at the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.
“The risks around us are changing, and it's essential that roads, neighbourhoods and other critical infrastructures are built for hazards we're seeing more and more of across the country,” he said in a phone interview.
Clark said Abbotsford was, in many ways, “ahead of the pack” when it comes to work on climate change.
“There’s a huge amount of work that the city’s government has done over the last decade to understand the impacts of climate change and sea level rise on neighbourhoods and infrastructure,” he explained.
But, Clark said now we must move from simply understanding the risks, to “mobilizing capital” to ensure infrastructure is built “for today and tomorrow.”
British Columbia is not the only province vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
In fact, in February, the Intact Centre and Climate Adaptation released a report based on a quantitative analysis of the 16 largest cities in Canada and graded them from A to E on their flood preparedness.
Blair Feltmate, the Head of Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, told CTVNews.ca the cities were graded based on seven measures, including whether they had up-to-date flood risk maps, if they knew where flood waters would go should a big storm hit and directions not to build on floodplains.
Researchers also looked at things like whether the city had a good water drainage plan, if homeowners were directed on how to properly protect their homes from flooding and the city’s preparedness in terms of protecting critical infrastructure. Feltmate said they also looked at preparedness at health care facilities.
The report, which was conducted in 2015, found that the overall score was a C plus, Feltmate explained.
“We went back five years later in 2019-20, and did virtually the same study all over again,” he said during a telephone inteview. “And the score was still C plus – so cities are not advancing rapidly in terms of preparedness for climate change, extreme weather risk and particularly flood risk.”
He said the area of weakness at the top of the list for each city “almost without exception,” was physical infrastructure.
“So there’s a lot of room for improvement,” Feltmate said.
Feltmate said the good news is that we have a pretty good idea of where the “challenge areas” are in Canada with regards to flood, fire and extreme heat risk.
He pointed to a report from Environment and Climate Change Canada, released in 2019. The report outlined which areas of Canada could see the greatest impact of extreme weather events as a result of the warming climate.
Feltmate said in Canada, experts have also done a good job of creating standards and guidelines to guard against these severe weather events.
The bad news, he said, is that the country lacks the “urgency” needed to prepare for these extreme weather events.
“We need to put adaptation measures in place very, very rapidly, to mitigate the risk not only what’s on the ground today, but the greater risk that's coming,” he said.
Clark said currently there is a “huge gap” in funding for communities to implement risk management and resiliency plans.
It’s “really important that all orders of government – particularly provincial and federal – help mobilize that capital so that [municipal] governments can make the investments they know they need to make,” he said.
According to Clark, it’s “not going to cut it” to invest solely in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
He said it’s also going to take investments to build resiliency against the impacts of climate change.
“In many cases, it’s the fiscally prudent approach,” he explained. “We’ll be incurring massive costs if we don’t increase resilience and start building better and building protections for communities.”
Clark said research has shown that, in many cases, making those investments now will ultimately help to save money in the long run.
In fact, the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices released a report this fall, looking at the cost climate change could have on infrastructure systems across Canada.
Clark, who co-authored the study, said researchers found that in B.C. there were “substantial risks” for coastal flooding and inland flooding in many regions, including the Lower Mainland.
The study suggests that even under the best-case global emissions scenario -- which means global warming is kept to less than two degrees Celsius – the costs associated with damages to the Lower Mainland from flooding is still expected to cost about $400 million per year in the next 20 years or so.
“Unless we take action to start building better and building resiliency into communities,” Clark said.
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