As expected, river levels hit their peak in the North Saskatchewan River late Sunday night in the Battlefords.
But now the river levels are again going back down, with no reports of flooding or major disruption.
According to Patrick Boyle, spokesperson for the Water Security Agency, the peak “came around right where we thought it was, just in that 12 to 1,400 cubic metres per second range and just over two metres rise in the water levels in the river.”
That flow is now making its way to Prince Albert and was expected to peak there late Wednesday or early Thursday.
“It’s not uncommon for flows in the system, but for this time of year it’s significant,” said Boyle. “We’re not too used to seeing larger flows like that at the end of August, so that’s kind of the difference as a whole as to why we were watching that pretty closely.”
The cause of the high levels was heavy rainfall in Alberta, something not usually seen during the month of August.
Because of the high flows in the river, it was acknowledged there was a brief impact on the ongoing Husky oil spill cleanup efforts.
Boyle reported that some of the booms across the river had to be moved in the meantime because “with some of those high flows it brings debris, and debris could cause a lot of problems to some of those booms. You can’t run the risk of damaging or losing them.”
In general, people had to be aware of the river levels in managing the shoreline cleanup efforts, Boyle said. Now that the river levels are going down the booms are expected to go back in and the oil spill cleanup effort should be back at full strength quickly.
As for whether the river flows might have stirred up any sediment at the bottom of the river, Boyle confirmed the WSA’s monitoring testing was still ongoing and they were looking closely to see if that happened. The WSA’s testing includes not only surface water but sediment as well.
The testing itself is going to continue to go on “for the foreseeable future,” Boyle said.
