Red River Floodway

[5] From south to north, the Floodway passes through the extreme southeastern part of Winnipeg and the rural municipalities of Ritchot, Springfield, East St. Paul, and St. Clements.

Following the submission of the Royal Commission report Manitobans were strongly divided as to whether the province could afford the capital costs of a mammoth engineering project that would benefit primarily Winnipeg.

The project was championed by Dufferin (Duff) Roblin, the Leader of the Opposition and head of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party, but it was vehemently denounced by opponents as a monumental, and potentially ruinous, waste of money.

Indeed, the projected Red River Floodway was derisively referred to as “Duff”s Folly” and “Duff’s Ditch”, and decried as “approximating the building of the pyramids of Egypt in terms of usefulness.” The construction of the floodway and Assiniboine River works, would entail a capital cost of over $72 million, amortized over fifty years at 4% interest, at a time when the province had a population of only 900,000 and an annual net provincial revenue of about $74 million.

The West Dike which extends to near the village of Brunkild is the limiting factor on the volume of water that can be diverted around the city, as a result of the extremely low grades in the area.

To compensate, the province broke operational rules for the Floodway, as defined in legislation, during the night of April 30 / May 1, to prevent waters in Winnipeg from rising above the designed limit of 24.5 ft (7.5 m) above the "James Avenue datum", but causing additional flooding upriver.

Winnipeg Mayor Susan Thompson, announcing that the design limit had been reached, misinterpreted this as good news that the flooding had peaked.

Work began in late 2005 under a provincial collective bargaining agreement and has included modifications to rail and road crossings as well as transmission line spans, upgrades to inlet control structures and fire protection, increased elevation of existing dikes (including the Brunkild dike), and the widening of the entire floodway channel.

Since the completion of the expansion, the capacity of the floodway has increased to 4,000 cubic metres (140,000 cu ft) per second, the estimated level of a 1-in-700 year flood event.

The expanded floodway now protects over 140,000 homes, over 8,000 businesses, and will prevent more than $12 billion in damage to the provincial economy in the event of a 1-in-700 year flood.

The NDP government was criticized by Conservative Brian Pallister, then the Member of Parliament, for requiring workers in construction companies working on the floodway to unionize.