The City of Calgary is putting forward their next move in the flood recovery process, naming five experts to form a panel tasked with coming up with a series of recommendations to protect the city from future flooding.

Officials will be employing a wide-ranging process to examine, evaluate, and prioritize environmental, infrastructure, and policy measures that would significantly reduce the potential harm from floods.

"Calgary and Calgarians are amazingly resilient, but the floods also demonstrated that we can -and must - do more to manage future flood risks," said Mayor Naheed Nenshi in a release.

"Bringing together a panel of experts, including recommendations from Calgarians, will ensure we have the best information available to make good decisions and keep our city protected."

He says that the panel is an important part of flood prevention.

It will be chaired by Wolf Keller, the former director of water resources for the City of Calgary and includes:

  • Darrel Danyluk, P. Eng, a civil engineer with over 38 years of experience in the field of municipal infrastructure engineering
  • Roger Gibbons, Ph.D., former department head at the University of Calgary
  • Dr. Erika Hargesheimer, Ph.D., MBA, the former general manager of the City of Calgary's Community Services and Protective Services Department
  • Dr. Steve E. Hrudey, Ph.D., D.Sc(Eng), P. Eng. - Professor Emeritus, Analytical & Environmental Toxicology Division Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Alberta.

“This panel is an exceptional group of experts and we are fortunate to have their involvement in this process,” said Wolf Keller, The City’s Chair of the panel. “The panel will address community-wide and watershed scale river flood protection and will engage other experts and citizens throughout the process. We will also be working closely with the Province since many of the possible solutions will require Provincial support and coordination of effort.”

The panel’s aim is to come up with a list of recommendations in the coming months.

Residents are also invited to contribute their own recommendations and ideas so that no important suggestion is left out.

A series of information meetings will be set up in flood-affected communities starting next week to help citizens get the right information they need.

A dedicated webpage has been set up on the City's website. It can be accessed through the following link.