policy | weather + tourism by michael j leeb
infrastructure iconography tourism national parks climate
flood mitigation
W ith the catastrophic widespread flooding in southern Alberta on June 20, 2013, many of the areas within the Rocky Mountains and their leeward eastern foothills experienced significant damage to road and bridge infrastructure. One case occurred in Waterton Lakes National Park – the extreme southwest corner of Alberta bordering British Columbia and Montana. Called ‘the Crown of the Continent’, Waterton is a biosphere ecosystem in the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. In an unnamed and typically dry creek bed along the Akamina parkway experienced a sudden flash flood between late spring and early summer of 2013 washing out a large section of the road to Cameron Lake, a scenic drive popular with park visitors. A consequent large-scale repair and flood mitigation project took almost a year, reopening the parkway at the end of May 2014. The mitigation solution works like this: a partial earthen dam lined with large cobble creates a reservoir in a shallow depression. A barrier screen of steel beams is placed at its centre, angled backward with the slope of the creek bed and reinforced by two additional steel beams as structural supports. Gravel and smaller rock debris pass through this screen; large boulders and rock debris are stayed. The volume and momentum of water is slowed before it reaches a large culvert that runs under the road itself. This prevents a breach or washout of the road – it withstood 180mm of sudden rain in mid-June 2014. The creeks run east-west, the roadway runs north-south – a gabion retaining wall forms a structural rampart for the eroded shoulder of the road over a sheer drop on its western edge. The re-design and construction of these steep creek beds to control storm water and debris is meant to avert or at least limit the impact of a potentially catastrophic flood event within the foreseeable future. On one hand, the Akamina mitigation project protects public safety and continued access to hiking trails, boating and canoeing on Cameron Lake, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. On the other hand, similar flood mitigation projects constructed in other mountain parks have deeply scarred the landscape; like open wounds with a visceral impact, they are at odds with the heritage conservation mandate of Parks Canada – the preservation of a pristine landscape. To ensure continued access for tourism, pragmatic necessity has re- shaped and transformed Parks Canada policy. The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society expressed concern in its 2014 report that infrastructure projects, (including commercial infrastructure such as hotels) have taken precedence over the social, ecological and economic benefits of national parks and designated wilderness areas. The announcement on July 14, 2014 of a federal five-year commitment and budgetary allocation of four million dollars for Parks Canada, earmarks the majority of these funds for the future development of infrastructure, rather than for scientific research projects or heritage conservation.
Such projects imply a fundamental shift in the conceptual framework of Parks Canada, where flood mitigation and increased flood resiliency are seen as an asset, and where flood reclamation and its consequent altering of the landscape does indeed take precedence (in selective circumstances) over the natural morphology of the landscape. Capital investment and commercial development now appear to trump former policy goals, with Parks Canada’s mandate more closely resembling the US Park Service. Recent projects such as the Glacier Skywalk in Jasper National Park and similar flood mitigation projects in Banff National Park confirm this shift in policy. Infrastructural projects, a form of ‘manufactured landscape’ that actually changes geomorphology, represent alterations of the natural environment through human intervention. Flood mitigation measures to protect roads that deliver visitors deep into the park freeze the natural changes that occur in mountain ecosystems. These projects defy the power of water to alter a landscape; instead they try to avert the natural process of climatic change within the mountain geography. It could well be argued that such a policy shift within mountain national parks will be costly and possibly ineffectual should climate change progress rapidly, releasing untold forces of nature. Although the Akamina Parkway flood mitigation project is an impressive example of innovative engineering and design, it has substantially altered the Waterton Lakes National Park’s landscape to provide a new visitor experience and to ensure the continued viability of the park’s infrastructure. It also is the advent of a fundamental policy shift within Parks Canada that will most assuredly affect the ongoing viability of Canada’s national park landscapes.
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Michael J Leeb
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