Residents at Stump Lake are frustrated and exhausted, as many are seeing extreme flooding for a third straight year.
Stump Lake resident Cindy Coelho reached out to NL News and says her home is on higher land, but she’s lost frontage.
But she says right now, the lake is at the door step of her retired neighbors, Dave and Debbie, who she says have been sandbagging every day for three months.
“Frontage like yards and trees and sheds and fences, 100-year-old trees are in the water now. So this lake is not meant to be where it is, but it is where it is. And I’m just trying to find some relief for my neighbor,” Coelho says.
She adds that just last night, gusting winds caused a power outage for more than six hours, from 6 p.m. to after midnight, saying her neighbours called her this morning to say they have “given up the fight.”
“These events have effectively broken the backs of our neighbours.”
Coelho says homes have been damaged beyond by flooding at the south end of the lake, and says properties on the north end are now seeing the same devastation.
“It’s political in a great form, that the lake used to (drain), we had an outflow. But there’s two very big ranches at the south end of the lake there. Years ago maybe the outflow was filled in. Somebody’s changed the landscape and no one’s willing to admit it.”
She says there’s still no political will to help property owners and to address the situation, saying government has spent millions of dollars to raise Highway 5A but that it has been “ineffective” in helping prevent flooding for landowners.
“The high water mark is 20 feet under water. It’s absolutely ridiculous what’s happening.”
Alleged attempt to drain Stump Lake
When asked by NL News if ranchers may have blocked an outflow to the lake, the B.C. government did not answer. However, while it didn’t say if human activity has caused to lake levels to go up, it says it appears someone has purposely tried to bring it down.
The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development says it, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are investigating after someone dug a channel to try and drain the flooded Stump Lake.
It says the incident happened on someone’s private property, as apparently to try and reduce the lake’s level.
It wouldn’t give any more specifics because it says an investigation is ongoing.
(Photo: Cindy Coelho)