Municipality of Chatham-Kent Council is set to receive an update on the operating criteria for the W. Darcy McKeough Floodway.
Girish Sankar, director of water resources for the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority (SCRCA), is set to provide a presentation to Council of their upcoming meeting scheduled for Monday, April 12, 2021.
The meeting will be LIVE streamed by Your TV, here.
On Friday, SCRCA officials posted a video featuring Sankar providing a tour of “the largest flood diversion project in Ontario.
“The floodway has been operated three times since the filming of this video for a total of 10 operations since its construction,” SCRCA officials said on social media.
Have a look at the video, below:
SCRCA officials say the floodway was completed in 1984 to reduce the threat of flooding in the town of Wallaceburg.
The floodway is situated approximately 12 kilometres north of Wallaceburg in Sombra Township.
It consists of an earth fill dam embankment and concrete control structure housing two vertical sluice gates.
The grass lined diversion channel stretches seven kilometres west to the St. Clair River, SCRCA officials say.
Near the channel outlet, a concrete drop structure reduces the energy of the diverted flood waters before entering the St. Clair River.
The drop structure also separates the St. Clair River from the normally dry channel.
The control gates remain open under normal flow conditions, but when Wallaceburg is threatened by flooding, they are closed and divert the flow down the diversion channel, SCRCA officials say.
The McKeough Floodway is capable of controlling all flood water upstream of the dam by diversion and temporary storage.
The floodway is located such that it controls approximately 37% of the East and North Sydenham River drainage basins upstream of Wallaceburg, SCRCA officials added.
Back in August of 2018, Chatham-Kent Council put their unanimous support behind a ‘fulsome’ review of the operations of the floodway.
Former Wallaceburg Councillor Jeff Wesley had entered the successful motion.
“The dam has worked very well in the past,” Wesley said.
“There are however properties in Wallaceburg that are flooding with the current operation. I think it is time for the Conservation Authority to undertake a review of the criteria that is used to determine when the dam is closed and when the dam is opened.”
While the current operation of the dam has saved property damage and flooding in Wallaceburg, there still remains certain properties in Wallaceburg that continue to flood under the current operating criteria, Wesley said at the time.
The Council meeting is scheduled to begin on Monday at 6 p.m.
