Research Centre: Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering
To keep North Dakota's spring thaw waters from flooding into Canada, Canadian farmers from Manitoba's Pembina River Basin constructed a 29 km dike just 10 metres north of the U.S.-Canada border. Built in the 1940s, the dike has proved an effective method in stemming the flow onto Canadian soil, but flood waters now inundate farmlands south of the border.
Research Centre: Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering
One of Canadas most vulnerable waterways is the Red-Assiniboine Basin where storms and spring flooding send a great number of agricultural pollutants into Lake Winnipeg, the areas largest fresh-water resource. The resulting nutrient runoff acts like fertilizer, feeding microscopic algae which multiply rapidly and which create an algal bloom that depletes the oxygen in the water, increases water toxicity and puts fish, wildlife and people at risk of consuming these toxins.