The City of Swift Current is moving forward with efforts to try and mitigate flooding from the Swift Current Creek after receiving approval for some grant money.

City council approved Monday night for Golder Associates Ltd. to prepare a detailed design of six flood problem areas along the creek that could use flood protection berms and tender documents for construction of two berms by Ashley Park.

The cost of that work, $199,700 plus GST will be split down the middle between the City and the Water Security Agency (WSA) under their new Flood Damage Reduction Program (FDRP).

"We were fortunate enough to have done a fair bit of work on flood mitigation previously, so we kind of had a leg up on getting into the early stages of the program," General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations for the City of Swift Current Mitch Minken said. "We're one of the first projects approved under the program."

Some of the previous flood mitigation work was done by Golder Associates Ltd. including a 2012 flood hazard map and in 2014 they prepared a preliminary design for the six flood protection berms which will protect up to 1:100 year flood water.

"The history that we know of there has not been a 1:100 event in the City, there was the 2011 event, which was fairly large," he continued. "Then there was one that was probably a bit higher in the late 50s, but they were fairly similar and they were 1:200 or 1:300 events. By getting to the 1:100 event height we will be well prepared to withstand big flood events if they happen to come along."

As of now, the City is still unsure what the berms for the six problem areas would look like but they've got a general idea.

"At this point, I can't even tell you that as we go into the detail design," Minken said. "We have an example, there is a berm in Ashley Park on the north side of the creek from 6th Avenue Northeast going to the east along the creek is an example of what it may look like. We're not sure whether that particular one is high enough right now it may need to be raised to accommodate the 1:100 event... but it's basically a hill."

The City had set aside $800,000 in the 2017 budget for design and construction of a flood mitigation project which was dependant on grants.

"Even though we have $800,000, when we budget we budget for the spending of grants, so actually we will have $600,000 left when this is done," he explained.

The detailed design portion of the project must be completed by March 31, 2019, for the City to get reimbursed 50 per cent of the cost from the WSA.

"If everything is positive and funding coming out of that (detail design phase) we would look at construction in 2019," Minken said.

In the City's five-year capital plan flood mitigation is slated for $2.7 million in funds from 2021 to 2023.