By Andru McCracken
Colleen Shawara is happy that she only lost half an acre to the Dore River flood on June 23rd. When the high water swept down the Dore River, it changed the river’s course and swept away her well.
“That one day it just took it all away,” she said.
Now she and her husband are getting water from a next door neighbor through a water hose and they’ve been buying drinking water from the Home Hardware in town.
Thankfully the river is no longer cutting through her yard.
“It brought in a lot of gravel and a lot of big trees,” she said.
Shawara said that officials from the Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations – Water Stewardship Division have been monitoring the river’s new course with a drone.
It’s not the first flood on the Dore River of course. She was present for a big flood that took place in 1986.
She wants to know whether the provincial or federal government can help them stabilize the banks to stop erosion.
“We don’t want our land back, although there is enough gravel,” she said.
Residents are concerned with log jams higher up on the Dore that haven’t yet broken free.
“It’s not only the water we’ve worried about. Over the years we have had ice jams as well,” she said. “It’s frightening.”
