Cleanup continues as northwestern Ontario floodwaters recede
As floodwaters continue to recede, the Town of Fort Frances, Ont., has begun cleaning up and making infrastructure repairs.
But that will take some time.
"The problem with doing all of these repairs is ... the water is going down, but it's still very high," said Travis Rob, Fort Frances's manager of operations and facilities. "So we really can't start any of this work until the water reaches that normal level.
"We can only do so much construction in any given year. Once we get into the fall, we're going to have to kind of stop all we're doing and wait until next spring.
"We've got a bit of a small window now to get some of this work done. So a lot of this work, I think, is going to be carryover into next year for completion."
Sandbags line properties along a flooded riverfront road in Fort Frances, Ont., in this June drone photo. The situation in the Fort Frances area is improving, however, with water levels dropping and cleanup underway. (Nathan Calder/Facebook via CBC)
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Fort Frances is among the municipalities that have been dealing with flooding for weeks.
Rob said with water levels in the area finally having peaked, the town is beginning to do damage assessments.
"There's a lot of debris and logs and sticks and other things that are all up on property now that once was a park or other green space," he said. "We have all of that cleanup to do, lots of areas where we haven't been able to get in and cut grass for a month or so.
"So just lots of cleanup."
There are still some low-lying areas under water, but the town's infrastructure has generally held up pretty well.
"In terms of road damage, our roads that were submerged seem to be fine coming out of it," Rob said. "We have kept traffic off of the the roads that were submerged just to try and allow the granular materials underneath of them to dry out and strengthen back up again, before we start putting loaded vehicles and things on them.
"We are noting a number of storm sewer outfalls along Agamiing Drive, that area primarily, that have failed or partially failed. So we are seeing some riverbank areas where there's signs of undermining and things like that related to storm sewers."
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Lake levels dropping
In its Monday update, the Lake of the Woods Secretariat said Rainy Lake levels are expected to drop "substantially" in the coming week.
Water levels on Lake of the Woods itself have also peaked, and are expected to drop by three to five centimetres in the next week, the secretariat said.
Kent Readman, Kenora's fire chief, said despite the lake level dropping, water levels in some areas of the city remain high.
"From what we're getting from Lake of the Woods Control Board is it's going to take a significant amount of time for [water levels] to start dropping," he said. "We've seen the peak, but we really haven't seen any any significant drops yet."
Readman said repairs to infrastructure in Kenora are underway.
"We've basically been repairing roads as we go," he said. "We have built up a number of roads within the city, both north of the bypass where the flooding started in the Black Sturgeon area, as well as in the more-urban parts of the city.
"As far as things are right now, most of the roads are in good condition. We don't have any closed roads at this point, everything has been known fixed to the point where we can safely allow people to travel through them."
Both Readman and Rob said their respective municipalities are looking at changes they can make to help mitigate any flooding in the future.
Readman said a report looking at the flooding, and including possible infrastructure changes, will be completed.
And Rob said talks about Fort Frances infrastructure have already begun.
"This water level is definitely going to be the benchmark for kind of a minimum standard of how far we want that remediation to go moving forward. There's other work that needs to happen, and there's other grant programs that we can apply for, for mitigating events like this in the future."
This article was originally published for CBC News.