Waters haven't been same since floodway
Sunday, June 10, 2007
By Bill Redekop (Winnipeg Free Press)
 SEINE RIVER -- Some summers, water levels on the Seine River inside Winnipeg drop so low you can cross the river with one long stride.
The Seine, which runs 27 kilometres inside the city, starts to look more like standing water in a tire track after a rain. Algae turns the standing water a thick spinach-green colour. The waters eventually debauch into a kind of brothel for swamp-dwelling insects.
That sad-looking river is an impostor, says Dave Danyluk, co-ordinator of the Save Our Seine group.
The real Seine River had 75 per cent greater flow prior to floodway construction in the 1960s. The floodway sliced the Seine River in two. It hasn't been the same since.
The Save Our Seine group wants that historic wrong corrected as part of the floodway expansion currently underway.
"It would mean more species, more habitat. The biodiversity skyrockets" if the river's flow is restored, Danyluk said.
However, the province maintains any significant change to flood-control systems on the Seine would increase flood risk both inside Winnipeg and for Grande Pointe to the south.
The province plans some changes, to start in 2008, but those changes will increase the Seine's flow by only five to 10 per cent, said Doug McNeil, Manitoba Floodway Authority vice-president of construction.
Not enough, said Danyluk. "SOS is not at all in support of just a few little modifications."
The non-profit group, composed of Seine River residents and environmentalists, has commissioned engineering studies, including one with help from a $40,000 grant from the Clean Environment Commission, that say the province could do much more.
When initial floodway construction, completed in 1968, cut off the Seine River, floodway officials developed the Seine River Intake Structure. A pipe running under the floodway carries Seine River water into Winnipeg -- essentially reconnecting the river.
But the intake structure also includes a system of weirs that diverts Seine water into the floodway for flood protection. The problem is that the weir system diverts too much water. McNeil concedes that excessive amounts of water are diverted out of the Seine.
The floodway was built "when minimal flow (into the Winnipeg portion of the Seine) was not a concern. The design took into account mostly flood protection," he said.
The floodway authority plans to raise the weirs so more water will enter the Seine inside Winnipeg, instead of flowing into the floodway. It also plans a better siphon pipe that doesn't become plugged by debris, as happens now. But SOS would like to see a gate at the intake structure, instead of weirs, so water is diverted to the floodway only when there is a flood threat. SOS would also like to see the Floodway Authority reduce the slope of the siphon pipe so fish can swim upstream.
SOS would like changes upriver to the Ste. Anne's diversion, too, which diverts Seine River water into the Red River. The Ste. Anne structure diverts so much water out of the Seine that the artificial channel is now considered a fish habitat and protected by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
A study by engineer Ron Coley estimates the changes would cost about $6 million.
Inside Winnipeg, the Seine follows the length of St. Anne's Road and then veers away along Rue Des Meurons and Rue Archibald, before emptying into the Red River at Gaboury Lagimodiere Park, next to the better-known Whittier Park.
Seventeen parks, three golf courses and about 200 homes and some apartment blocks and condos border the Seine River inside Winnipeg. The golf courses are Windsor, Niakwa and St. Boniface. The city also owns 120 hectares along the river, much of it the urban park system called the Seine River Greenway.
Danyluk, a former realtor, maintains that improvements to the Seine River pushed by the SOS group have increased property values along the river.
For example, SOS has built a riffle, a kind of man-made rapids, that helps retain flow within Winnipeg longer, but allows canoeists to pass in a vee channel. The group has identified 10 other sites for other riffles, which it hopes to start building next year.
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