The reeve of the Municipality of West-Interlake says the KGS report on flood mitigation in Manitoba had lots of good information. The report released this week recommended more than $1.1 billion in flood mitigation work in the province, Including diking work, upgrades to the Portage Diversion, and the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin Outlets. Randy Helgason says while there are some good recommendations, he feels the timelines and order of importance should have been included.

"I would have liked to have seen them prioritized in the order of completion, and they didn't do that. What I'd like to see first and foremost is the Assiniboine River downstream of Portage improvements be completed in order to increase the flow capacity to the 28,000 cfs."

He says the two outlets should also be top priorities, to prevent devastation similar to what was seen in 2011 or 2015. Helgason says there was one factor missing from the recommendations; the issue of Saskatchewan flood waters coming into the province. Helgason notes the issue was included in the report, but not in the formal recommendation.

"I would hope that our provincial government, whoever that might be, will take steps to really work with the Saskatchewan government in order to have some type of control over the water before it gets into the Manitoba system, and eventually into our lakes and rivers."

He also hopes to see a list of names of the individuals involved in the various committees consulted, noting as a member of the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin review committee they had to sign their name on any documentation that went out.

Overall Helgason's hopeful the release of the report and its recommendations will lead to results, in order to prevent any more major flood challenges for Manitoba.

Hopefully the province acts on the recommendations and do them in the order that's most beneficial to all Manitobans, so we can avoid these disasters that are still causing RMs all around Lakes Manitoba and St. Martin to continue to deal with DFA."