Flood victims argue for more government money

The Perth-Andover Flood Victims Committee is arguing for more government money for relocation, saying they deserve compensation because the problem is man-made.

The village was hit by record ice jam flooding two months ago, forcing about one-third of the northwestern community's 1,770 people to leave their homes. The flood level was roughly 1.5 metres higher than the last major flood in 1987.

Al McPhail is chairperson of the victims' committee:

"Our disaster is not an act of nature, it's an act of man. We're living in a man-made flood zone," McPhail said, "I think if you asked a hundred people on the street in Perth-Andover, a hundred people would say, 'It's made by the Beechwood Dam.'"

McPail said, "We've been living on the shores of the St. John River up here for almost 200 years. When the Beechwood Dam was built in 1955, I was a young, young boy at that time, we had houses right on theriver's edge. Those houses were moved off there as the waters rose. The government moved them. Really, they just didn't expropriate enough land."

'We have to get up off that river edge to higher ground. To me it's the only solution that will allow a homeowner to sleep nights'Al McPhail, chair of the flood victims' committee

The committee said the small amount of disaster financial assistance handed out so far has victims frustrated, worried, and desperate.

McPhail said as of last Monday, the flood victims' committee knew of three buyouts, two people who'd been advised their claim was approved, and 20 claims that were rejected. That's out of more than 200 applications.

McPhail said there is growing frustration and despair.

"We have to get up off that river edge to higher ground. To me, it's the only solution that will allow a homeowner to sleep nights,"he said.

"If you're sitting there and your house is all torn apart and you're waiting on a cheque to be able to put your home back together and get back in it from a hotel room, and you know that your neighbour received 50 cents on the dollar, man, you got to lay in bed at night wondering, 'What am I going to get?' and 'What am I going to do?'"

"Now, we're to a position where NB Power has constructively expropriated our downtown core. We need to be compensated for that. And the best way for compensation is to move us."

Flood victims are getting together Wednesday evening to talk about property damage claims.

McPhail hopes to gather more information about settlement offers made in the past couple of days.

NB Power says Mother Nature to blame

In an interview last month, Keith Cronkhite, the executive-director of business development for NB Power,said there was little the utility could do to deal with the ice jam.

"It's important that if water's able to flow, it flows at its natural rate, because you could cause abnormal conditions downriver," he told CBC News.

"So again, we try to match the inflow with the outflow, thereby not causing any further events downriver."

NB Power was prepared for high water levels, said Cronkhite. But dealing with a major ice jam was not expected.

"We looked at it and said, 'You know, we're gonna have high flows' and we prepared our facilities to make sure they were operating normally, which they did during the event," he said.

"But predicting ice jams and the resulting flows due to high conditions and the ice jams that result from that is a challenging environment."

Cronkhite contends all of the utility's facilities performed as they should, but they were overwhelmed by Mother Nature.

This wasn't the first time a hydro dam has been criticized for flooding in a New Brunswick community.

St. George residents blamed the Irving-owned Lake Utopia dam for contributing to the flooding in the southwestern community in December 2010.

The company hired a consultant in 2011 to examine the complaints. That report said the company's handling of the dam did nothing to contribute to the severe flooding in the community.