Dear Editor,
I was very surprised there was no mention or pictures of the flooding in town along the Battle River last weekend in the Ponoka News. Is that because the flooding was caused by Ponoka's "beaver management" cowboys?
Was the extensive flooding along the battle river north of the train trestle, which took out all 3 pedestrian bridges the weekend of April 12-13 precipitated by removal of the beaver dam at the train trestle?
I walked my dog to the train trestle on Thursday or Friday April 10 or 11 and the pedestrian bridges were all intact. When we got to the train trestle, a friend and I noticed backhoe tracks where the beaver dam was and the beaver dam was gone. The following day, the entire trail system north of the trestle was flooded and by Monday all 3 pedestrian bridges were washed out.
That dam was there all winter and all it did as far as I could tell was raise the river maybe a foot above normal, south of the dam. Water was flowing over it all winter long and likely would have continued to slowly release water all spring – had it been left alone - but some control freak just had to go in there and tear it out and now the entire town is without walking trails as there is no way of getting anywhere without the pedestrian bridges.
Have people learned the lesson yet to leave nature be? Can you not - in future - leave the dam and see what happens? At worst flooding will happen south of the train trestle - where the river banks are high and it will not impact limited recreation opportunities in the town and only for a short period of time - instead of what happened, which was horrendous flooding north of the trestle, in town where there likely would have been no flooding anywhere had things been left alone.
Who is going to pay for the repair of the pedestrian bridges? Taxpayers? Maybe the beaver control freak cowboys, who can’t restrain themselves from creating problems to justify their own existence by creating the very flooding they intend to prevent should get out there and fix the dam bridges!
Sheila Jacobson
Editor’s note: Due to the space restrictions in last week’s edition, we did not repeat in print the photos of the flooding we had already shared on our Facebook page.