The City of Swift Current plans to help preserve a portion of the creek bank this year, and you can bank on that.

Every year, the natural wear and tear of the creek running its course slowly erodes the edges of the creek bank. This is a problem in a city like Swift Current as there is infrastructure like roads and bridges that are affected by this erosion, and private properties built on the creek bank can and will become endangered by erosion slowly piling up until something gives way.

Presenting this idea to council was the City's Manager of Engineering, Jolene Peters.

Peters discussed how since 2021, the city has had a bank rehabilitation program that has endeavoured to retain and protect eroded creek banks along the 14 kilometres of riverway in the city.

"There are generally two types of creek bank erosion, bank scour and mass failure," stated Peters. "Bank scour is caused by the removal of bank materials by flowing water, which undermines the bank and causes it to collapse. Mass failure is caused by overland runoff down the bank and saturation of soil, resulting in the destabilization of the slope."

Bank scour is fixed by reshaping the slope, and installing armouring materials to protect the soil.

Mass failure is repaired by installing new soil materials and strengthening cohesion by installing anchors.

"Most locations have been identified where the creek bank has failed within the city," assured Peters. "The city is planning to repair a failure along 6th Ave Northeast that was the result of mass failure using the Geoweb Slope Reinforcement System."

The Geoweb Slope Reinforcement System installs lattice that helps hold soil and plants. The lattice is a criss-cross of sheet metal, that helps to hold up and support the soil and rooted plants on a sloped surface. This has the benefit of looking natural and unobtrusive.

The City will be hiring Swift Current's Knudsen Excavating for this job after they approved their bid of just over $93,000. This is well within the budget for creek bank repairs within the City, which is $250,000.