Michael J Leeb: Flood mitigation. Akamina Parkway, Waterton Lakes National Park

With the catastrophic widespread flooding of June 20, 2013 in southern Alberta, many of the areas within and along the Rocky Mountains and their adjacent foothills on the leeward or easterly slopes of the mountains, experienced significant damage to road and bridge infrastructure. The city of Calgary itself had flood-related damages of about five billion dollars.

One example of this flood damage occurred in Waterton Lakes National Park in the Rocky Mountains at the extreme southwest corner of Alberta bordering British Columbia and Montana. It is an area called 'the Crown of the Continent', a biosphere ecosystem in the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
    
In this area a creek bed is typically dry, however for the past two years (2013-2014) creeks experienced sudden flash floods between late spring (May) and early summer (end of June to early July).  Extensive floods along the Akamina Parkway in June, 2013, washed out a large section of the road to Cameron Lake, a scenic drive popular with park visitors and tourists. This consequently necessitated the closure of the parkway for extensive and lengthy repairs, and for work on a large-scale flood mitigation project.

Construction on the Akamina Parkway Flood Mitigation Project started in 2013, the parkway was reopened on May 31, 2014.  A partial earthen dam lined with large cobble creates a shallow depression or small reservoir.  A barrier screen of steel beams is placed at its centre, angled to tilt slightly backward with the slope of the creek and reinforced by two additional steel beams as structural supports. Gravel and smaller rock debris pass through while the momentum and volume of water is slowed, preventing large boulders and larger rock debris from passing through and damaging the roadway. Water is slowed before it reaches the large culvert that prevents a breach or washout of the road – an effective design since it withstood about 180 mm of sudden rain over 36 hours in mid-June 2014.

A cantilevered rock wall (retaining wall) secured in place by wire mesh has been constructed along the June 2013 washout, just south along the downward slope of the road.  It provides a structural rampart for the eroded shoulder of the road along a sheer drop on the western slope. While the roadway runs south to north, the creek beds are at right angles running east to west; the steepness of the mountainside contributes a swollen torrent of fast flowing water when sudden heavy rainfalls occur.  The re-design and construction of these creek beds to control water and debris is meant to avert or at least limit the impact and damage of a potentially catastrophic flood event within the foreseeable future.

Similar flood mitigation projects have also been constructed in other mountain parks including Banff National Park.  These projects have deeply scarred the landscape; like an open wound with a visceral impact, they are seemingly at odds with the heritage conservation mandate of Parks Canada – the preservation of a pristine landscape. However, these projects do allow for public safety and continued accessibility to several hiking trails, boating and canoeing on Cameron Lake, and winter activities including snowshoeing and cross-country skiing – pragmatic necessity seems to have evolved recently to shape and transform Parks Canada policy towards increased tourism.

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 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 within Canada’s national parks, rather than scientific research projects and heritage conservation.

These projects seem to imply that a fundamental shift in the conceptual and policy framework of Parks Canada has occurred, one where flood mitigation projects and increased flood resiliency are regarded as an asset; that flood reclamation and its consequent altering of the landscape does indeed take precedence (in selective circumstances) over the natural morphology of the landscape caused by floods.  Capital investment and commercial development now seemingly trumps former policy goals, with Parks Canada's mandate more closely resembling the US Park Service. Other recent projects such as the Glacier Skywalk in Jasper National Park and very similar flood mitigation projects in Banff National Park would also confirm this shift in policy.

Have these projects on infrastructure therefore become a form of ‘manufactured landscape'? Burtynsky’s 2013 project and film,Water, explores many relevant ideas on similar topics and issues.  These 'manufactured landscapes' represent man-made alterations of the natural environment or landscape through human intervention by constructing infrastructure such as dams that prevent or alter the natural geomorphology of a natural environment. Flood mitigation measures to protect roads that deliver visitors to lovely spots actually freezes the natural changes that occur in mountain ecosystems. In addition, these projects seem to defy the power of water to alter a landscape and are intended to avert the natural process of climatic change and its subsequent changes within mountain geography. The example of the Frank Slide as a metaphor is illustrative here: the early settlers of the Crowsnest Pass ignored warnings from indigenous peoples and defied the natural processes of erosion of unstable rock formations with disastrous consequence. It could well be argued that such a policy shift for the development of infrastructure within mountain national parks will eventually be costly and ineffectual should climatic change and the forces of nature progress rapidly to alter these parks.

The Akamina Parkway Flood Mitigation Project is an impressive one, and an example of innovative engineering and design that has substantially altered the Waterton Lakes National Park’s landscape providing a new visitor experience and attempting to ensure the continued viability of the park’s infrastructure. It is also the advent of a fundamental policy shift within Parks Canada that will most assuredly affect the ongoing viability of Canada’s national park’s landscape.

Michael J. Leeb is a poet, writer, and visual artist in Blairmore, Alberta and a member of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (SSAC).