Blackfoot Inn town hall meeting

See the Calgary Herald article about the meeting** Province fields tough questions from flood victims at Calgary’s first public forum The provincial government held an open town hall meeting on Saturday, July 20, 2013 at the Blackfoot Inn. The goal of the meeting was to answer homeowner questions about the province's Disaster Relief Program (DRP) and also about floodway and flood fringe mapping.

The meeting was chaired by a consultant from Stantec Engineering and featured representatives from the Alberta Emergency Management Authority (AEMA), to talk about the DRP and someone from Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (AESRD) to talk about flood mapping.

The tone of the meeting was generally respectful but there were some tense moments. People I spoke with after the meeting either didn't like the answers they got or felt they didn't get answers at all. The general theme was a 'one-size-fits-all' approach which didn't feel like it fit very well for many of the people in the room.

Rather frightingly there was a lot of emphasis on homeowner's options to move out of their communities. The government committed to paying the lower of repair or replacement cost (calculated at the average cost to build an average home --not lot, just home-- in Calgary), if a homeowner wanted to move out. This did not satisfy most of the people in attendance, especially those in the red 'floodway'.

The government representatives didn't seem to feel this created the risk of hollowing out established communities that have been there for 100 years. There was a lot of discontent about this issue amonst people at the meeting but it wasn't shared by the government representatives.

There were a lot of questions about how the land title notation would be applied and whether it was tied to the acceptance of DRP funds. The government reps were unable to clarify questions around land title notations.

There is some further detail in the DRP manual available here but it is still pretty thin: http://alberta.ca/albertacode/images/DRP-manual-home.pdf.

Overall DRP information can be found here http://alberta.ca/2013DisasterRecoveryPrograms.cfm

Other questions:

- When will we find out about the individual homeowner flood mitigation building standards? They did not commit to a date but strongly hinted these would come out this week.

- What if I've already completed work (eg. installed a replacement furnace in the basement) and the rules / guidelines change in the building standards? They said a policy decision would be made "soon" about this.

In the end many people were left with questions. We remain hopeful that we will get more answers at our meeting on Tuesday, July 23 at 7:00.