Continued overland flooding challenges with rual roads in the R.M. of Dufferin and water supply challenges in the Town of Carman, Prairie Rose School Divison has made the decision to close Carman Elementary School and Carman Collegiate for today.

Meantime, there's some good news coming out of Carman. Local emergency officials say the ice jam on the Boyne River east of town has dissipated, meaning water levels in town could start to dimish futher. However, homeowners are urged to keep any sandbags or other structural assists in place as there could be another surge of water within the next two to three days.

A local state of emergency remains in place for Carman today as flood waters from the Boyne River start to recede. A five to six mile long ice jam has backed-up the river east of the community, causing it to spill its banks in town Sunday sending hundreds of volunteers scrambling to fill sandbags to protect area homes.

Mayor Bob Mitchell says it's nice to see that the water has gone down about twelve to twenty inches, depending on the area, however officials are concerned that ice jams west of Carman will cause another surge of water to come racing in.

"The province is monitoring that and they'll let us know what to expect. Our hope is that the water levels go down enough in town that we have the capacity."

The situation has kept public works crews running all weekend as the excess water has put some stress on the town's infrastructure systems, forcing residents to limit their usage of the systems.

"We've had issues with the water treatment plant," explains Mitchell, "the turbidity of the water is such that we can't treat the water so we had to shut our water treatment plant down." This meant the town turned to the Pembina Valley Water Co-op to supply water to the community, which the Mayor says would've been fine except for the three water line breaks that happened overnight into Monday.

"As a consequence, we've run our system and Pembina Valley Water Co-op's pretty well out of reserves so their running everybody just on what they can produce out of the Stephenfield plant."

He adds there are areas of town that currently have no water because of the breaks, noting crews are actively working to make repairs.

In addition, Mitchell says a pump blew at the town's main sewer lift station and as a result, some homes did experience sewage backups and crews are also working to fix that problem.

Meantime, an ice jam at the 1st Street bridge near Ryall Park caused some damage to that structure overnight and as a result, that road has now been closed limiting access to the downtown area.

As for damage sustained to homes, Mitchell figures between thirty and forty either experienced water in the basement or had sewer back-up. He says most of that damage occurred in the Heritage Acres development, the condos over by the golf course, homes behind the post office and in the Legacy Estates.

Run-off also forced the closure of various other streets in Carman on Sunday, including Highway 245 on the west side of town. "I've been here for thirty-five years and that's never happened before that I know of," explained Mitchell. The road has since reopened to traffic.

 

He says this is a situation that no one could have anticipated, adding it obviously didn't cross the minds of those that built the area diversion."If we could've been able to shut-off the intake coming into town, we could have limited the flooding. We're going to push to see if we can get some kind of control structure built on some of the culverts, but these culverts are big, they're five feet by about ten."

Meantime, officials in the neighbouring R.M. of Dufferin are breathing a small sigh of relief today as overland flooding levels have tapered slightly. Reeve George Gray says water is down about half an inch seven miles west of Carman but notes that could change very quickly.

"The water could drop dramatically in the next twenty-four hours but I couldn't comment one way or the other until Mother Nature decided to wave her magic wand."

Gray adds about twenty to thirty miles of rural roads were washed out over the weekend and is partly to blame for classes being cancelled on Monday at Carman Elementry, Carman Collegiate and Elm Creek schools because buses couldn't travel.

"The start of the clean-up is just starting but we won't really be able to do much until the actual flows indicated that the (flood) event is over."

A state of emergency issued on Friday for the R.M. of Dufferin will remain in place until further notice.