Manitoba's flood maps are twenty years old, and this is the year that shows
The province budgets for the flood it has mapped. The last two springs arrived off the map entirely.
WINNIPEG — Manitoba's designated flood areas were last comprehensively mapped in the mid-2000s, and the gap between that map and the last two springs has become the quiet through-line of this year's infrastructure debate.
The mapping matters because nearly everything downstream of it is mechanical: where the province requires flood-proofing, which municipalities qualify for mitigation grants, what the Crown insurer prices, and where a buyer's lawyer tells them not to buy. A map that is twenty years old does all of that work with twenty-year-old assumptions about where the water goes.
A provincial review promised new hydraulic modelling for the Red and the Assiniboine by 2028. Municipal leaders along both rivers have asked for an interim designation this year, arguing that two springs of off-map flooding are themselves a dataset.
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