Heavy rain washes out road, floods homes east of Edmonton

Another wet weekend for the Edmonton region triggered emergency alerts, flooding and washed-out roads.

A CityNews drone captured one such washed-out road near Sherwood Park, east of Edmonton, on Monday.

Township Road 534 along the Oldman Creek was destroyed by the flowing water – just one of more than two dozen road closures in Strathcona County. It’s not expected to open for months.

“We’ve got significant amount of rainfalls that entered these creek systems. It’s unprecedented. It will likely take at least three months to reinstate the road and get it back open for traffic,” said Kevin Cole, the deputy chief administrative officer of infrastructure and planning services for Strathcona County.

Meteorologists say this is the wettest June on record for the Edmonton region, with over 255 millimetres of rainfall.

While this weekend saw less rain than last weekend, the new precipitation caused significant issues because the ground was already saturated.

Jubilee Landing, a trailer park in Sherwood Park, was among the flooded areas.

“This water, whenever the level gets up like on heavy rains, then it overflows and it runs through this whole area here,” Doug, who asked not to share his last name, told CityNews.

“I’m vacuuming my water out of my garage.”

Strathcona County says it’s keeping a close eye on neighbourhoods that flooded, but specifies areas like Jubilee Landing are “privately owned mobile home communities, and they operate their own water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, including a private stormwater management pond.”

“We’ve already done a survey of the area to determine if there’s additional measures that we need to put in in place to ensure that flooding of those neighbourhoods doesn’t continue,” said Cole.

But Doug says more needs to be done.

“Why does the county wait for this to happen before they put the pumps in?” he asked. “They know perfectly well that this thing is gonna flood. Why not build a permanent in-place pump with a float on it?”

Beaver County, an hour east of Edmonton, declared a state of local emergency, with an extended flood alert asking residents to conserve water.

This alert was in effect for all Beaver County municipalities, including Tofield, Ryley, Holden, and Viking.

“We are seeing significant impacts to our infrastructure as the overland flood waters from around the county have now been added to our water flow mitigation,” Tofield Mayor Adam Hall said in a Facebook video Sunday. “Pumps have been moved to support that mitigation but we are far from out of this situation.

“We do understand this has been a lengthy process and that folks are becoming more frustrated as time goes by.”

In Edmonton, overland flooding shut down roads this weekend, such as 137 Avenue from Starling Drive to 200 metres west of Starling Drive.

All boat launches along the North Saskatchewan River were closed due to high river levels and accelerated flow rates.

“Current conditions make it unsafe to operate any vessel on the water and swift-moving water and eroded riverbanks pose a significant risk for people, water vessels and pets,” the city said in a news release.

“Residents are asked to maintain a safe distance from moving water and keep pets leashed near the North Saskatchewan River and stormwater ponds, as complex river rescue operations endanger the lives of dedicated first responders.”

Edmontonians are also being told they cannot watch Canada Day fireworks from the river or near riverbanks.

Utilities provider EPCOR tells CityNews it’s fielded approximately 600 calls since Saturday morning.