Mayor Naheed Nenshi is fuming after the province denied his request for financial aid to help cover the damage Calgary sustained during last September’s freak snowstorm.
The application was put forward to the Alberta Emergency Management Agency along with the recommendation that it be approved, Nenshi says.
However, it was denied with the agency saying that the event was not extraordinary and didn’t meet the threshold requirement.
The snowstorms in early September ended up damaging about half of all the trees or about one million in the city.
The cleanup took months to complete, with city crews, residents, and business owners all pitching in to help.
Nenshi says he is stunned that the province would think that the city’s biggest snowfall in 131 years was nothing out of the ordinary.
“This is unbelievable. It is unbelievable. We’re not taking about a huge amount of money. The city will cover it – we will manage it, but the fact that it was forwarded to the cabinet for approval, the cabinet did not approve it, and they are now telling us that climate change is your problem, not ours is an extraordinary statement on the part of the government.”
The total cost for recovery from the storm is pegged at $27M.
