Premier Alison Redford, who met with a room packed with experts and officials at the Deerfoot Inn on Friday, says that there needs to be a defined strategy to deal with flood mitigation.
“It's not actually building a plan to just make a list of what everyone said and to implement everything everyone has said,” Redford told the conference. “So there are a number of people at this symposium from impacted communities and technical experts around the province who've had a number of ideas but never had the opportunity to bounce those ideas off each other and to determine what our priorities are and how they fit together.”
Redford said there needs to be layers of readiness that range from individual homeowners to major government projects such as building dams and berms.
She says that 2013 was the year that everything changed and it will forever be a reminder of the ‘startling brutality’ of water.
Earlier this week, the government chose two firms, AMEC and AECOM, to help them come up with mitigation solutions.
Both companies are internationally-recognized engineering firms.
The province will be meeting directly with various municipalities on Friday afternoon to continue brainstorming on flood mitigation.
(With files from the Canadian Press)
