Close to 200 people attended a public meeting in Harriston Tuesday night to look at options for dealing flooding in the town.
Minto Mayor George Bridge said the flood in June of 2016 caused about $6 million in damages and fortunately no lives were lost.
Bridge said at one time the river through Harriston was necessary for power but it's not needed anymore so they looked at alternatives.
“Everything from digging the river down deeper, try to get the water to go faster through, putting possibly levies up above in the watershed and even down to one of things was actually re-directing the river around Harriston, not having it actually go through Harriston anymore,” he said.
Bridge said cost is obviously an issue.
“So one option is $23 million. But a small town like Harriston or Minto cannot afford $23 million on their own, so we'd have to go to federal funding and other things. But there'll hopefully some of that mitigation funds available, but we can't get into the big items until we get some extra funding,” he added.
Bridge said another issue is insurance.
“In most insurance companies it'll get to a point maybe where, if you have two or three events, then you're gonna have a hard time getting insurance or the insurance will get really, really expensive. So if we don't do something, then some of our people in Harriston might not be able to get insurance," he said.
Bridge said they're still looking for more comments from the community and it will come back to council in the new year when the new council has been sworn in.
