The City of Chestermere Roads department worked to mitigate slight flooding that occurred in areas of the community due to heavy rainfall on May 31.
“There were a number of areas, where the water rose,” said the Manager of Roads and Fleet Mel Bohmer.
“The East Chestermere area filled the ditch and over the ditch due to an obstacle in the space near the culvert. We cleaned the culvert out, and it drained within an hour,” he said.
“The area in East Chestermere had water coming over the top of the road, it wasn’t flooding into buildings, but it was flooding over the road because somebody had put snow fencing in front the culvert,” he said.
In addition to the East Chestermere Drive area, the ditches around Tim Hortons also filled with water.
“It filled up the ditches there, but within 12 hours there were no remaining issues upon inspection,” Bohmer said.
Although water levels rose Sunday night, the storage ponds, the reserve areas, and the dry ponds filled with water which ensured other areas of the community did not flood.
“There was a soccer filed that had a bunch of water, but that’s actually a dry pond area. When the water gets high it’s meant to fill in there, it’s designed that way to do that,” Bohmer said.
“By the naked eye it looked like it was flooding, but it really wasn’t. It’s a catchment area. We want the water to be stored there so it can be released at a slower rate,” he said.
Throughout the evening, the City of Chestermere Roads team received multiple calls from residents in various areas of the community to check the catch basins.
“Most of the catch basins we found were overwhelmed a little bit for a period of time. Within an hour they were all draining pretty normally,” Bohmer said.
“We monitored all of the levels. There weren’t any major concerns, some of the storage ponds got pretty full, but nothing overflowed, and there was no damage,” he said.
Adding, “The catchment areas did their job and collected any extra overflow, which slows down the release of water.”
To ensure public safety, the Chestermere Fire Department, and Chestermere Municipal Enforcement monitored the area and directed traffic.
“Our system held up well for the amount of water we had in a short amount of time,” Bohmer said.
