The Mayor for Ritchot says he is confident the province will come through with funding for municipalities that spent money floodproofing this spring.

As of April 8th, provincial flood forecasters were still calling for levels along the Red River to rival 2009. Ritchot Mayor Chris Ewen says as a result, his municipality prepared for such a flood. It purchased 400,000 sandbags and when you combine salaries and other work, Ewen says Ritchot has already spent in excess of $100,000 this year on flood preparedness.

By April 9th, the province lowered crest levels considerably along the Red River. The Red is now expected to stay well below 2011 levels.

Ewen says if there is not a flood, in order to try and recoup some of their costs from the province, Ritchot will have to state its case for why it did all the floodproofing. Ewen says this year they took their queues from the province, whose forecasters kept calling for significant flooding.

"Absolutely, we did it on recommendation of the province," admits Ewen. "Every time we received something, we prepared to suit that forecast."

Yet, as of April 11th, Manitoba's Infrastructure Minister was still non-committal on whether any sort of disaster financial assistance program might be put in place for municipalities.

"I'm confident that we will come to an agreement with the necessary higher levels of government to make sure that we receive that (Disaster Financial Assistance) or the disaster funding," he says.

And if not, Ewen says Ritchot is in a healthy financial position and has funds in place for these types of emergencies.

"Luckily we've had a pretty good relationship with the provincial government and they see that we want to make sure that our residents and our communities stay safe," says Ewen. "So I don't see it being an issue. Having said that, we won't know until we get (the money)."

According to Ewen, not all floodproofing in Ritchot is at their expense. For example, the province pays to build up the highway at St. Adolphe. The province is also responsible for building the super sandbag wall along the river in Ste. Agathe. Though, he suggests the province may have acted prematurely in putting up that wall.

"I don't want to say they jumped the gun, but they jumped the gun," says Ewen.

He suggests the wall went up just ahead of a new forecast being released which significantly downgraded projected levels.

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