COLUMN: Carillon Flashback February 24, 1961 – Seine River Diversion to be ready for spring

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/05/2022 (1089 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although the final water control structures still have to be built, the Seine River Diversion channel will be able to divert the overflow of water this spring, if this becomes necessary, according to a provincial government spokesman.

This, perhaps, is the most welcome news heard in many years by farmers with land along the banks of the Seine River, from Ste Anne westward. Over the years, a lot of water has not only run under the bridge, but over their land, since discussions first began about some way of getting rid of this annual flood menace.

The Seine River Diversion has been under construction since 1958, when it was one of the earliest projects to become part of an $83 million flood control plan for Manitoba.

The bridge on No. 12 spanning the diversion channel was completed last week and is now open for traffic. A new railroad bridge, which had to be built to cross the channel, has also been completed. Other bridges, west towards the Red, are still under construction.

Total estimated cost of the channel was placed at $1.8 million, but it is now believed that costs will not go that high. The first contract on the diversion project was awarded in 1958.

The first phase of the Seine River Diversion project, involving excavation of the channel from the Red River east to Highway 59, was completed in 1959, and the second phase became part of a major flood control plan announcement in June of 1960.

It was then, that engineers with the Water Control and Conservation Branch of the Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Conservation, announced one of their biggest seasons as far as provincial drainage projects were concerned.

Tenders called for the construction of the Morris River channel, Devil’s Creek channel, the Norquay floodway, the Shannon Creek floodway, two sections of the Seine River Diversion and the Manning Canal outlet.

A total of four million cubic yards of earth was to be excavated on land drainage projects that year. The Seine River Diversion flood control project alone accounted for nearly two million yards of excavation.

With the completion of these two sections of the Seine River Diversion channel this fall, the entire project will be nearly completed, except for about the final one-quarter of a mile, which has been delayed, pending arrangements now being made with the CNR for construction of a new bridge through the railway embankment, approximately 1½ miles southeast of the town of Ste Anne.

The contract for the excavation was awarded in the fall of 1959 and the second stage of the diversion channel, east of PTH No. 59, was well advanced at the time of the June, 1960 announcement.

Good working conditions allowed for the excavation of the entire Seine River channel to be completed before the spring of 1961.