Editorial

Slow thaw exactly what the doctor ordered

It’s not exactly news that there’s a lot of snow out there, but now it’s official. Alberta Environment is warning people in the Slave Lake, Peace River and Cold Lake areas that there could be big run-off this spring if the conditions are right for it.
On the other hand, if things continue the way they’ve been going, everything should be hunky dory.
But a sudden upswing in temperatures could send a lot of water down from the hills in a hurry, the province warns. Combined with heavy rainfall, it could make for some pretty bad flooding.
Any news about high water has to be bad news for residents and landowners along two creeks on either side of Slave Lake. Mooney Creek and Eating Creek are so prone to flooding that it doesn’t take extreme amounts of snowpack to put them over their banks. They tend to do it every year or two regardless – all it seems to take is a couple of days of rain, or even less if it’s heavy enough.
Marten Creek is another trouble spot. During high water last spring, a couple of property owners lost chunks of their land. The flooding was pretty general in the Poplar Estates area east of Slave Lake, and Mooney Creek did its usual routine upstream of the old highway bridge, which serves as a dam. It is in bad shape and the M.D. would like to remove it, but is receiving some resistance to that idea from residents who like to use the alternate route into and out of town.
So the heavy snowpack can’t be good news for those people, although it might be good for keeping Lesser Slave Lake full. The best scenario is probably very gradual melting over a period of several weeks. That’s exactly what had been happening during most of March, so perhaps we’ll get out of this without any damage.
Knee-deep in you-know-what
One wonders what it would take to shake loose some cash from the province or the feds for a proper sewage collection system in the south shore area.
How about fish full of caffeine? That, according to one M.D. councillor, is a sure sign that coffee drinkers’ pee is getting into the lake in concentrations too high for comfort.
Then there’s the other stuff in all those south shore septic fields, migrating along paths of least resistance when the water table is high. The point is that the lake water is at risk. And government funding for the sewer system seems to have dried up.
What’ll it take to shake it loose? The lake turning brown?