The Nicomekl Flooded Again. The Report Recommending Action Is Three Years Old.

October brought the seasonal flooding that South Surrey's low-lying areas have come to expect. The engineering report recommending dike improvements that would prevent it was completed in 2021. Nothing has been built.

The water came up the way it always does — gradually, then suddenly, seeping under doors and pooling in low spots on roads that have flooded in the same places for twenty years. Residents in the Elgin and Crescent Beach areas moved cars to higher ground from muscle memory. Some of them have been doing this for a decade.

The engineering report commissioned by the City of Surrey to assess dike conditions in the Nicomekl River corridor was completed in 2021. It identified specific sections of the dike system requiring upgrade, estimated costs, and recommended a phased improvement program.

It is now late 2024. The recommended improvements have not been built. The budget for dike upgrades has been discussed in several budget cycles and deferred in several budget cycles. The dikes are in the same condition they were when the report was written, while the development upstream of them has continued to increase the volume and velocity of stormwater entering the watershed.

The residents who flood are not a large constituency. Their numbers are small enough that the political calculation — expensive infrastructure investment to protect a relatively small number of properties — has consistently come out against action. This is the honest explanation for why the report sits on a shelf while the basements fill.

It is not good enough. The people whose homes flood every October are not asking for luxury infrastructure. They are asking for the basic protection that is the fundamental obligation of any municipality to its residents.

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