Another reason why I hate politics and politicians. This project has taken 9 years to get it to this point. After suffering the costliest natural disaster in Calgary's and the country's history, the lack of urgency in getting this done was stunning to begin with. Now, a new premier casts doubt on it.
This is exactly a 'no filter for crazy'. She appears to hears a few random opponents of the current project say a different project will be cheaper, and fewer people will hate it, plus it can be used for irrigation storage. And instead of thinking for a second, she appears to conclude "whats not to love".
The group the Comprehensive Flood and Water Management Council wants to build a huge reservoir with multiple dams to connect and store the headwaters of the Elbow, Sheep, and Highwood Rivers.
From the Springbank dry dam's environmental assessment:
"The Tri-River Joint Reservoir would have included damming of the Sheep River. The Proponent concluded that this option as proposed could not meet the Province’s flood mitigation objectives and was not determined to be feasible due to environmental restraints such as complex geology, limited ability to have any notable flood attenuation capacity for the Sheep River watershed, and poor water management for the Elbow River and the Highwood River."
In the past Danielle Smith interviewed former Mayoral candidate Emile Gabriel about the concept, which was framed as "what if the Springbank Dam failed" , though I can't find audio of it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200929080328/https://www.preventingalbertafloods.ca/
As far as I can gather, the project would be a series of dams across the main and tributaries of the Elbow River, connected by tunnel and pump to a large storage dam which floods the headwaters of the Highwood and Sheep to the point that they are joint headwaters.
This project would appear to appeal to Danielle Smith for a number of reasons:
1) it protects High River from floods without expropriation of private property (that the High River flood protection and expropriation is largely done doesn't matter)
2) it frees Okotoks from its water limits, and provides flood protection
3) it blows up Calgary's water licenses (which was a long term goal of the Wildrose)
4) it stores more water for irrigation without having to trade some farmers against others (like the Eyremore Dam near Brooks)
5) it might protect Calgary from floods without needing land sales or expropriation in Springbank (that the sales are done doesn't matter)
6) someone told her it is cheaper, and she is much more likely to believe independent experts than a team on experts hired by the government
7) she thinks far fewer people would be opposed
In the end it comes down to her appearing to trust non official sources 1000% more than official and once that opinion is formed, not thinking about what could have changed in the mean time to change that analysis.
