[troutman]

2010 study warned of more frequent flooding in Calgary

Report suggested 'worst case' wouldn't be as bad as earlier predictions

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/po...712/story.html

Provincial and city officials were warned three years ago that climate change could cause Calgary to suffer more frequent and devastating floods.

The existence of the previously unreleased study by Golder Associates and some of the findings it contains about historic inundations in Calgary appear to contradict statements made by Alberta’s Conservative government in the wake of the recent floods.

“I want to stress that what Alberta has experienced in this past week was unprecedented,” Environment and Sustainable Resource Development Minister Diana McQueen told reporters on June 25.

“No report or recommendation looking at the lessons of the past could have prepared us for this event.”

But the 2010 study, like larger ones done previously for the province, show that the Bow River in Calgary was hit with estimated peak flows in both 1879 and 1897 that were 30 per cent higher than what the city experienced four weeks ago.

The highest flow on June 21 of 1,740 cubic metres per second was only slightly more than the downward-revised 1-in-100 year event that Golder Associates predicted and over 11 per cent smaller than what the province’s 1983 study said was probable once a century.

Calgary Flood Damage an Outcome of Poor Policy not Climate Change or Global Warming says Friends of Science
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/7/prweb10908388.htm