The Mayor of Ritchot is taking the revised flood forecast in stride. That forecast, issued Monday, says water levels on the Red River could go as much as 1.5 feet above 2009 levels at Ste. Agathe. Chris Ewen says their ring dikes and flood defences can handle this amount of water so they are keeping calm and making preparations.

"It's just a matter of waiting to see how the thaw works out, how warm the weather gets and making sure that our EMO, our Emergency Measures operator is read to go. He is getting his budgets ready, he is making sure his operations base, or his call-in centre, is fully functional as of Monday next week. As long as we are as prepared as we were in 2009, we have nothing to worry about."

Ewen reiterates that their flood infrastructure can handle 1.5 feet above 2009 levels.

"It's a matter of some extra sandbags. We did look at 2009 levels. That year we brought in 300,000 sandbags. We're going to add another 100,000 to that order list so that we have 400,000 sandbags for the community members, for the major infrastructure assets that we have and then we'll go from there."

Ewen adds they finished the St. Adolphe rink dike expansion two years ago and says throughout the RM, the province has helped Ritchot to improve flood defences so that the concerns of 1997 don't happen again.