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Kelowna claiming $2.2 million in flood relief from the province

A much bigger claim is still to come to cover the cost of recovering from this spring’s flooding
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During the flooding earlier this year, lake water at Kelowna’s Rotary Beach Park surpassed the barriers put in place to protect the beach. —Image credit: Warren Henderson/Capital News

The City of Kelowna has submitted two claims to the province for reimbursement of a total of $2.2 million to cover its costs during the spring flooding that hit the Central Okanagan earlier this year.

Representatives of Emergency Management B.C. (EMBC) were in Kelowna on Monday to go over the claims with city staff.

According to city finance division director Genelle Davidson, the task of gathering all the paper work related to every aspect of dealing with the flooding event was a big one.

“This particular event was more complicated because (the response) was multi-jurisdictional,” she said.

With each municipality in the region submitting its own claims for reimbursement from the province, Emergency Management B.C. will have its work cut out for it sifting through all the claims.

Davidson said the meeting on Monday was to make sure the city had provided all the information required in a format acceptable to the EMBC officials.

The request for event response reimbursement—which is 100 per cent—is separate from any request that the city plans to make for reimbursement of money it paid out to deal with the recovery from the flooding.

Davidson said that reimbursement is 80 per cent of what the city paid out and she anticipated the figure will be much larger than the $1.2 million and $1 million claims the city is making for dealing with the flooding event as it occurred.

City finance staff will send a report to city council Monday outlining the request it will make for recovery fund reimbursement from the province.

Davidson said she could not divulge details prior to it going to going council but said the will be substantially larger than the event reimbursement claims.

In August, West Kelowna said the flooding had caused $4.1 million worth of damage to its infrastructure and has a massive impact on its operations during the spring.

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