Conditions improve at B.C. pump station at catastrophic risk; Whatcom expects minimal impact
Though he said low lying areas the Sumas Prairie area in British Columbia remain one good rainstorm away from being in “deep doo-doo,” Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said he feels a whole lot better on Wednesday morning about the risks associated with an overworked pump station possibly failing and causing catastrophic flooding in the region.
That is good news for already flood-stricken areas of Whatcom County near the U.S.-Canadian border that worried about the potential impacts of even more water spilling into their communities.
Braun reported that as of Wednesday morning, Nov. 17, the Barrowtown Pump Station continues to operate at full capacity.
“Through the night, many volunteers, staff contractors, staff and contractors and our partner organizations were able to build a dam,” Braun said during an online briefing Wednesday. “A road first in to get to the pump station and then build a dam to protect the pump station to buy us some time, and that has happened.”
The weather also has played a big role in averting more flooding and a potential dam failure to this point, Braun said, as the Fraser River levels have dropped approximately two meters in the past 24 hours.
If it drops another meter, Braun said flood gates at the Barrowtown facility could be opened, allowing “seven times more volume than those pumps — all four working full tilt,” further alleviating the pressure and the likelihood that more floodwaters spill into the area.
On Tuesday evening, Nov. 16, The city of Abbotsford issued an evacuation order and urgent notice to all residents who did not already evacuate the Sumas Prairie to leave the area immediately.
“Conditions within the Sumas Prairie within the last hour have escalated and pose a significant risk to life due to the imminent failure of the Barrowtown Pump Station,” the evacuation order read. “The Barrowtown Pump Station serves as a critical piece of infrastructure to ensure the Sumas Lake does not reform.
“With the failure of this key piece of infrastructure, water within the Sumas Prairie will not be able to be pumped out and water from the Fraser River will begin entering the already flooded Sumas Prairie area.”
With additional water flow from Sumas Mountain creating further flooding in the area, Abbotsford warned that “this event is anticipated to be catastrophic.”
With the emergency dam being built Wednesday night, water levels dropping, and no “real rain” forecast to hit the area until Tuesday (Nov. 23), Braun said, “I think for the moment I feel much better than I did last night.”
But Braun cautioned, “We’re not out of this yet. The Nooksack is still flowing across our border. That water is pouring into Sumas Prairie. ... If had another weather event, like the one that just went through, we are in deep doo-doo.”
Potential Whatcom County impacts
Everson Mayor John Perry wrote on Facebook Tuesday that U.S. officials weren’t sure how the potential threat of more flooding on the other side of the border would affect Sumas, Everson and Nooksack.
Sumas Mayor Kyle Christensen said on the city’s Facebook page that early discussions with Perry indicate that flooding in Sumas Prairie would not affect Sumas and Everson.
“The West Sumas Prairie (where the overflow at the border goes to) is gravity-drained by the Sumas River and that is what is helping to lower the water levels in Sumas and Abbottsford,” Perry said in a post shared by the city of Sumas Facebook page early Wednesday.
“If the dam fails, the East Sumas Prairie which is the old Sumas Lake will fill up until it gets to the level of the dike along the Vedder Canal which is 11 m and then will spill over a long section of dike back to the Fraser, likely not allowing the water level to get much higher (and the Fraser is receding).
“It looks like most of town would not be impacted, just the northeast fringes. And it will take a while (days) for the Fraser to fill in all this storage so Sumas would have time to evacuate if the dam does fail.”
Perry went on to say that there is no need for further evacuations within Whatcom County at this point.
“No impacts would be possible to Everson and Nooksack and any felt in Sumas would be minor compared to what we all just got over the past 24 hours,” the post read.
Nooksack flooding causing problems
The surge in water that the Sumas Prairie region is seeing is from the overflow from the Nooksack River flowing across the border into Canada, Braun said.
That floodwater from the Nooksack spilling into the region created extra stress on the Barrowtown Pump Station — a four-pump station that helps keep water from the Fraser River out of the Sumas Lake Canal and agriculture land in the Sumas Prairie.
Running at full capacity, Braun said the four pumps at the Barrotown Pump Station could move approximately half a million gallons of water per minute.
“Our pumps were designed for a specific capacity,” Braun said. “While the situation remains critical, the Barrowtown Pump facility is operating at its full capacity. But it was never intended or designed to take on water from another country.”
Further complicating issues in Abbotsford, Braun said, were U.S. river recording devices on the Nooksack River being offline for a while.
Measuring gages on the Nooksack River near Nugents Corner maintained by NOAA’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service weren’t sending real-time data for parts of Monday and Tuesday, but the Northwest River Forecast Center kept accurate river information, the National Weather Service in Seattle said. NOAA charts show gaps of several hours Monday and early Tuesday.
“We were flying blind,” Braun said. “We did not know where the crest was and the modeling going forward. In a perfect world, we would have liked to have had that data a lot quicker.”
Braun said Canadian officials have been involved in discussions with their U.S. counterparts for years about how to prevent a flooding Nooksack River from spilling across the border into Canada.
“It’s like many things — it’s been studied to death,” Braun said. “Everybody knows what the issue is. We have the same issue on the Fraser River. We have raised those alarm bells over, long before I became the mayor, and probably going back 40 years. Those dykes need to be protected. ...
“We have raised this with the state of Washington ... but we can’t tell the Americans what to do. They need to beef up their own dykes to keep the Nooksack water on their side of the border. This isn’t the first time the Nooksack’s gone over.”
