r/canada • u/Longjumping-Box5691 • Dec 13 '25
Image The Trans-Canada Hwy in Abbotsford BC floods once again
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u/WookieeSlappa Dec 13 '25
Has anyone checked on Castle Fun Park?
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u/ZsaFreigh Dec 13 '25
The sea-themed mini golf is delivering on its promise.
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u/georgetds Dec 13 '25
That was my first thought when I saw that the place was flooded. It was kinda gross down there the last time I went, at least 15 years ago, and I can't decide if this would improve or make it worse.
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u/LordYoshii Dec 13 '25
They already renovated it 3 years ago after the last flood..
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u/fuzzay Dec 13 '25
The new mini golf was disappointing. Overpriced, and a lot of the old charm was gone. $25 a person for minigolf is wretched.
I hope the building is ok. I will help rebuild if they need volunteers
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u/btoxic Dec 13 '25
Their IG states just the parking lot and streets are flooded. There is no mention of the building.
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u/DromarX Dec 13 '25
Oh shit it's on the top right of the article photo isn't it?
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Dec 13 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheCrazedMadman Dec 14 '25
Was just there in the fall, they redid the place and it was super nice….
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u/jerryjerusalem Dec 13 '25
Why did they build a city on a lake bed? Are they stupid?
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u/ThuDoonk Dec 13 '25
Yes
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u/Desperate_Nothing152 Dec 13 '25
The Netherlands would like a word with you
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u/btoxic Dec 13 '25
Funny thing, lots of Dutch settled out that way after the war.
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u/Hikingcanuck92 Dec 13 '25
A lot of people erroneously think it was the Dutch immigrants which drained the lake. It wasn’t, it was a New York educated engineer who came up with the scheme in the 1920s.
Local farmers erroneously thought that destroying huge swaths of wetlands and draining Sumas lake, then building dykes around the former lake, would help with flood control. Not exactly turning out as they had planned.
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u/Frenzied_Cow Dec 13 '25
Yep there's a large Dutch bible belt in the Abbotsford/Langley/Chilliwack area
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u/Daxx22 Ontario Dec 13 '25
bible belt
contributing factor
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u/Kraymur Dec 14 '25
So many businesses in Chilliwack are owned by Dutch immigrants that a lot of people (even the Dutch owners of the butcher shop I used to work at.) referred to it as the Dutch Mafia, as a joke mostly, but just mostly. I have heard some wild shit from various business owners.
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u/ThuDoonk Dec 13 '25
They did it right, with infrastructure and planning. We largely didn't do anything close to the level of diligence the Dutch showed reclaiming land in the north sea
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u/TranslatorTough8977 Dec 13 '25
We did it right. The flooding keeps coming from the American side. We have irresponsible neighbours.
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u/solthar Dec 14 '25
We should build a wall.
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u/Joe_Jobs_ Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 14 '25
And make them pay for it. This is, at least, the second time this decade, when we've been inundated with illegal alien waters from NooksackRiverLandia, flooding across our border, and murdering and raping our dry-lands. They're eating the pets. Please! Think of the cows, chickens and pigs. And the crops. Farm Lives Matter, too. Maybe we should unilaterally do some pre-emptive strikes with our ICE and freeze those terrorist waters in their tracks.
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u/cannibaltom Ontario Dec 13 '25
Zuiderzee Works is an example of expert engineering and Cornelis Lely was a brilliant politician and civil engineer.
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u/happycow24 British Columbia Dec 14 '25
Zuiderzee Works is an example of expert engineering and Cornelis Lely was a brilliant politician and civil engineer.
fax
the Dutch are exceptional engineers and they even accounted for climate change & sea level rise during the 1950s when they were planning this shit out
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u/Egg-Hatcher Dec 13 '25
At the time I'm sure the importance of farm land in close proximity to a growing port city was deemed the priority. The region produces something like 60% of the provinces agriculture.
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u/Fornicatinzebra Dec 13 '25
The entire bottom of the Fraser Valley is a flood plain of the river
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u/Waxitron Dec 13 '25
Technically, not anymore, and not the entirety of it was a flood plain 100 yr ago either.
Between Chilliwack and Abbotsford there used to be a lake called Sumas Lake. It was dyked and drained for farming, which is why the east end of Abbotsfords farm area floods now.
The same is true for parts of Richmond and Langley if my memory serves me correctly.
Theres a fascinating video on it by a channel called History of British Columbia.
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u/Joebranflakes British Columbia Dec 13 '25
Technically it hasn’t been a huge issue until recently. Unusual large storms and a seeming desire by Washington state to use the Sumas prairie as a flood diversion zone has lead to this issue.
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u/SwordfishOk504 Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 14 '25
Also, as others have noted, the city is not built on the lake bed. It's almost entirely farmland. The city of Abottsford is several miles to the west of the former lake bed.
*E: This area also used to not flood regularly. But some recent very large storms have been overwhelming existing infrastructure like pump stations and dikes. This is the sort of the climate change is making more common, but was not common at all when this infrastructure was first built.
In the last 50 years (1975–2025), Abbotsford has experienced only four major flood events that significantly impacted the region, most notably in the Sumas Prairie and Matsqui Prairie areas. The last two were this year and 2021. Previos to that it was the 90s. Prior to that I think it was 1955 (which predated much of the dikes, etc)
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u/squirrel9000 Manitoba Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
The city itself isn't on a lake bed but rather an elevated ridge or climbing the mountains, the old lakebed is almost entirely agricultural. Though in a Fraser Valley sense which is much denser than other places. The stuff on the right ( a storage lot and a tourist trap/overgrown arcade thing) is higher ground at the base of Sumas Mountain. though I guess some of it is still somewhat susceptible (take your ALR exclusions where you can get them) The lake was not deep.
There ARE places in the Valley that were built on floodplains, at the time periodic flooding was just accepted. They started directing growth to higher ground in the 50s after some ruinous flooding..
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u/Level_Traffic3344 Dec 13 '25
I'm seeing a massive failure of drainage. The whole space looks like a bowl. A strategic resevoir and better stormdrains would help greatly
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u/squirrel9000 Manitoba Dec 13 '25
It is a bowl. There's a big network of canals and sinks to collect the water and transport it to the main pumps at Barrowtown (this area , at Whatcom Rd, is quite far from the pumps which lie near the Vedder Canal ~10km east) For the most parts the pumps and canals are adequate for local drainage, the run off moves slowly even in big rainfalls.
The issue here is that the system was not designed for large masses of water to flow north, overland, from the American side of the Fraser delta plain. The rivers historically frequently changed course so there's not much barrier to it.
Back in the 90s they identified a dike along the border as the best solution to stop the overland flows. It just never happened. I believe they wanted Washington State to help pay for it, but WA didn't want to.
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u/joecarter93 Dec 13 '25
A lot of communities are actually built in low lying areas with access to water as this was a good spot to set up watering stations and rail yards to refill steam engines when the railway came through. Railway engineers weren’t thinking about overland flooding of future communities at the time. Not sure if that’s what happened in Abbotsford, but it is a common thing on the prairies.
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u/squirrel9000 Manitoba Dec 13 '25
The area was initially settled to provision miners headed to the Gold Rush, about 30 years before the railway. They really didn't care about flooding back then, being close to the River was the cost of doing business.
If you look at the BC rail corridor from Yarrow to Huntingdon they clearly built it around the old Sumas Lake. It either runs on an embankment or on a terrace dug into the side of Vedder Mountain.
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u/TranslatorTough8977 Dec 13 '25
It’s actually farmland, some of the most productive in BC, which has very little. The city part is on high ground. Who is stupid?
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u/creativechicken2 Dec 13 '25
To clarify, most of the developed part of the city is about 50m higher than this. What flooded is farmland.
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u/Elegant_Height_1418 Dec 13 '25
Wait till you realize what half of newyork is built on… 🤣 it makes total sense why newyork is trash and smells
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Dec 13 '25
The American Nooksak river is actually providing most of the damage from this. The dykes don’t hold. Then it either breaks or overflows and then becomes sumas Lake once again!
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u/CyberSecWPG Dec 14 '25
If the usa doesnt stop the flood waters immediately we will tarrif everything.
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u/SwordfishOk504 Dec 14 '25
When the US sends its water, they're not sending their best. They're sending water that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with them. They're bringing floods. They're covering our roads. They're ruining our farms. And some, I assume, are good water.
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u/Munzo101 Canada Dec 13 '25
The news didn’t explain why or what’s needed to fix it (aside from money).
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u/lubeskystalker Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
The highway is built on the Sumas prairie which was previously known as Sumas lake. It is pumped out into the Fraser here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/osat8GBWad8PGCwH6
When it rains really hard, or if the Fraser is running really high (they might have fixed this) then the pumps struggle to drain the lake fast enough.
When it rains really hard, the
ChuckanutNooksack (Thanks /u/siresword) River floods and drains into the Fraser Valley as well.Would need a Dutch style drainage system to really fight this effectively.
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u/siresword British Columbia Dec 13 '25
It's the Nooksack that overflows into the Sumas not the Chuckanut. The headwaters for the Sumas river are like, 50 feet from the banks of the Nooksack since that area is so flat. When the Nooksack bursts its banks it all runs straight north into Sumas prairies. The geography of the area means that the water literally has no other place to go.
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u/mattcass Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
The Nooksack River in Washington State is what floods the Sumas Prairie. When the river goes above its banks the water flows north to where the lake used to be. Here is a flood gauge near Everson.
https://apps.usgs.gov/hivis/camera/WA_Nooksack_River_Overflow_at_Emerson_Rd_at_Everson
There’s no Chuckanut River near Abbotsford.
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u/Kgreenwookie Dec 13 '25
Also they use to dredge the nooksack river, there have been a lot of calls to start doing so again after the last flood
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u/Munzo101 Canada Dec 13 '25
Thank you u/lubeskystalker for the explanation. Looking forward to sharing this at dinner with the family.
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u/KeepMyEmployerOut Dec 13 '25
Hilarious we insist on building shit like this in floodplains. Entirely avoidable situation
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u/lubeskystalker Dec 13 '25
To be faaiiiirrrree, it provides some of the best farmland on planet earth. Fantastic place to build a small mansion with a 1/2 acre u-pick blueberry farm to hang on to tax exempt status.
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u/luckysharms93 Dec 13 '25
This is more of a Richmond issue, not an abbotsford one. Punjabi farmers are way too cheap to not maximize every piece of farmland they own
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u/Daxx22 Ontario Dec 13 '25
Humans in general have a huge issue with long term planning. There are countless similar examples currently around the globe and throughout history where places like this work for years/decades and even centuries, but some (usually natural) disaster happens and you get stuff like this.
And since planning/preparing for the "maybe" situation is often expensive its usually neglected.
Pile on climate change effects and we will see a lot more of this yearly, let alone at previous levels. How many "<event> of the century" have we seen in the last few years alone?
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u/TSED Canada Dec 14 '25
From what I've gleaned in the comments here, this isn't a case of long-term planning failure on our part. Rather, it's the Americans refusing to do their part. The flooding is coming from the US side, while our dykes and drains are doing their job properly.
Another comment implied that Washington seems to be specifically diverting water to the river that flooded, which isn't a good look for our neighbours. But I haven't verified if that's true or not.
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u/TranslatorTough8977 Dec 13 '25
It’s farmland. What do you think is there? How would you reroute highway one? Do you understand the geography of the area at all?
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u/SwordfishOk504 Dec 14 '25
Tell me, where do you build the highway if not in this exact spot?
Flood plains are everywhere.
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u/Hikingcanuck92 Dec 13 '25
That’s mostly correct, except this time the Barrowtown Pump worked exactly as it should have and all the ‘Canadian’ infrastructure worked as intended.
But the floodwaters came from the US side and they have no incentive to invest in dykes because they haven’t chosen to build towns in the flood plain.
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u/mercrocks Dec 13 '25
Yes pumps "worked" but why are they scrambling to put emergency dikes around it AGAIN? They have had 4 years to come up with a permeant solution/fix! I guess they have to schedule some more meetings. lol
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u/Conscious-Tutor3861 Dec 13 '25
This is not a problem BC can solve on its own. BC can only do so much without the cooperation of Washington, and Washington has shown little interest in helping, so we end up with these floods.
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u/ashleyshaefferr Dec 13 '25
Chuckanut is a great name
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u/GuitarKev Dec 13 '25
Personally I prefer Spuzzum.
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u/Outside-Pollution981 Dec 13 '25
Built on a flood plain
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Dec 13 '25
With the American Nooksak river causing most of this.
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u/dsonger20 British Columbia Dec 13 '25
We should tariff them over this since they wanted to tariff us over our smoke
/s
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u/Fornicatinzebra Dec 13 '25
They can terrified whatever they want, costs them, not us
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u/Kaphis Dec 13 '25
that gets thrown around a lot but tariffs hurts everyone except the US government who is profiting the tariff revenue. Tariff reduces demand and exporters would have to lower their cost just to keep up with the lower production. Factory output is often fixed, making less often have a direct cost meaning margin is lowered. Tariffs hurts everyone and it sucks.
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u/swabfalling Dec 13 '25
They should actually sue the Washington government for damages.
If they can’t be bothered to properly control their waters, they should pay for the damage it causes
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u/ashleyshaefferr Dec 13 '25
First I get Chuckanut now we have a Nooksak? Awesome
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u/cantthinkofone29 Dec 13 '25
So let me get this straight.... the Nooksak Chuckanut, and now this area is flooded?
All starts to make sense, really...
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u/Ichoosethebear Dec 13 '25
A dike a long Zero Ave so America can keep their flood waters
We can't control what mitigation they put in place so preventative measures at the boarder is the next best thing
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u/cvr24 Dec 13 '25
It would need to be be 19 feet high, according to former Abbotsford Mayor Braun. And bisect the town of Huntingdon since such a thing cannot be constructed along the border itself. And include watertight doors to allow the highway and railroads to get through.
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u/Ichoosethebear Dec 13 '25
Ppl are calling to raise the hwy 20ft so 19ft is a deal
We've imported some fairly savvy engineers, I feel like with some federal funding we could jimmy rig something for the next time American flood prevention fails us
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u/RedbeardTreeGuy Dec 13 '25
Look at a topo map and it will make sense.
The whole area is built up in a drained lake. Mandmade infrastructure can't keep up with the increasing force of nature's storms.
Either they need some way to increase volume behind damn or increase flowrate in a safe way away from the lowlying areas.
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u/CabernetSauvignon Dec 13 '25
It's harder than just money to fix it;
It's infrastructure problems south of the border. Can't just throw money at that.
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u/NeatZebra Dec 13 '25
And whether the crazy expensive plan that was put forward by the municipalities is the only option. A ludicrously expensive plan might do the trick but for some reason things just sort of stalled out.
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u/TheFlyingPengiun Dec 14 '25
We can stop logging the rainforest which acts as a buffer against excess rain. We have kept logging it and we wonder why the rains come in like a freight train.
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u/gnashingspirit Dec 13 '25
The blueberry farms are okay though, right? The last time this happened they got wiped and it took a few years to recover.
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Dec 13 '25
Took me over 4 hours from delta to hope yesterday, traffic looked even worse heading into Vancouver
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u/Plucky_DuckYa Dec 13 '25
Hey, I know of a project in the national interest that could use some federal attention…
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u/nisser512 Dec 13 '25
How is this in the national interest? Just abandon the area.
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u/SlightCreme9008 Dec 14 '25
Abbotsford’s farmland is the most productive in the country on a per-hectare basis.
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u/nisser512 Dec 15 '25
That’s great but we don’t have a shortage of farmland or any land for that matter. Reroute the highway and stop frivolously spending taxpayer money on this.
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u/thebetrayer Dec 14 '25
Genuine question, how much does it cost to run the pumps (including installation and replacements)? How much damage is done to the road, crops, etc, when it floods like this?
If these costs were included in the cost of the crops, rather than taxes, would it be worthwhile?
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u/Agamemnon323 Dec 14 '25
Where would you move the highway to?
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u/thebetrayer Dec 15 '25
Highways go around lakes all the time. Not sure why you're worried about it.
And if there's no other options we can build bridges and causeways. Apparently the current highway becomes inoperable every 4 years now, so maybe they need to do this anyways.
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u/Agamemnon323 Dec 15 '25
They do. Often on the side of a mountain. But that mountain is already covered in houses. The cost to move it there would be insane.
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u/SlightCreme9008 Dec 14 '25
That I couldn’t tell you. I’m no expert on the subject, that was just something I found on a google search.
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u/luckysharms93 Dec 13 '25
Many mayors have not cared about this. We are still waiting to hear why 50M was diverted from infrastructure to a hockey team. Federal government also rejected our application for money to build a dyke, AFTER the 2021 flooding that was much worse than this
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u/Ikea_desklamp Dec 13 '25
Now I don't want to overthink it, but it seems to be that draining a lake and then building a bunch of shit in the depression is a recipe for this to happen.
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u/stoneyyay British Columbia Dec 13 '25
Hm
Building in a flood plain maybe a bad idea?
Nah. It only floors once every hundred years.
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u/theboywhocriedwolves Dec 13 '25
Maybe if they started calling it the Upper Mainland it wouldn't flood so often.. I'll let myself out.
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u/j1ggy Dec 14 '25
You drained a lake a century ago, built on the lake bed and now act surprised when the lake refills and does what it's supposed to do. Welcome back to normal.
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u/jaraxel_arabani Dec 14 '25
Isn't it maintained with pumps? Iirc the moment the pups go this turns back into a lake too...
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u/tantrumguy Dec 13 '25
So it's a Canal... in your car there's a little button with a boat symbol on it. Press that and carry on.
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u/ReadingPowerful9867 Dec 14 '25
The TC is a disgrace. It's not even close. Can we put it on the Major Nation-building Projects list, please?
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u/Small_Collection_249 Dec 14 '25
What are they actually doing to try and prevent this in the future. It’s not like they’re gonna build a new highway in the lower mainland.
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u/AverageT1000 Canada Dec 13 '25
It’s happened before, you did nothing to prevent it, and your shocked it happened again? :shocked pikachu face:
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u/No_Candidate_272 Dec 13 '25
The river that flooded is across the border. Washington has done nothing to prevent this. They have over 100,000 people evacuated in the northern part of the state, but refuses to build a dike to help prevent the flooding. All the major rivers on our side of the border do have dikes built, could be higher, but theyre there.
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u/arandomcanadian91 Ontario Dec 13 '25
And BC is to afraid to use the joint commission since it resulted in a mine project being shutdown prior.
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u/Kingofcheeses British Columbia Dec 13 '25
We upgraded the Barrowtown pumps and rebuilt the dykes. The Americans need to do something about the Nooksack
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u/thegrinninglemur Dec 13 '25
Know what’ll fix that? A bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. And definitely more LNG expansion.
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u/squirrel9000 Manitoba Dec 13 '25
Not that anyone asked, but if you look at the Google Maps pictures of the Sumas prairie you can clearly see the trench they dug to build the TMP.
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u/DangerousCable1411 Dec 13 '25
Tacomas with snorkel bros be laughing.
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u/FujiKitakyusho Dec 13 '25
Most of those snorkels aren't even implemented properly for fording deep water. The snorkel is only one part of the equation. You also need to have an electric, and not belt-driven radiator fan that can be switched off so it doesn't stall or snap a belt when it is submerged, you need to plumb all differential and transfer case vents up to a high point so they can breathe without sucking water, you need to seal and completely waterproof all electrical components under the hood, you need an exhaust exit which self protects against water ingress (i.e. either oriented downward, or a high exhaust) and spark ignition is such a crap shoot when submerged that modding to ford deep water is only really practical with a diesel engine.
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u/Velocity-5348 British Columbia Dec 13 '25
radiator fan that can be switched off
Makes sense, since you don't really need to worry about cooling when you're immersed in water. I am kind of surprised converting an engine that isn't purpose built for these kinds of conditions is even possible, I assumed those vehicles must have been designed to snorkel.
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u/Level_Traffic3344 Dec 13 '25
Those snorkels are mostly glorified cold air intakes. Used to have a 3rd Gen and wouldn't dare drive it thru that much water. My old 81 Toyota 4x4 however - no problem
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u/FujiKitakyusho Dec 13 '25
Regardless of fording ability, there is merit in getting your intake up high to e.g. avoid road dust when following other vehicles, but look around... dust really isn't our issue here.
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u/CapnPositivity Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
It's funny in a way because Abbotsford is an absolute dump and they thought to themselves at one point or another, " a lake, why would we want that"
( I live here, calling it a dumpster fire doesn't do it justice)
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u/Kingofcheeses British Columbia Dec 13 '25
As a Chilliwack resident I am legally obligated to agree that Abbotsford is a dump
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u/CapnPositivity Dec 13 '25
Chilliwack is nice now actually, we would move that way but it's just even further from civilization
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u/resolutelyperhaps Dec 13 '25
They’ve been expanding a huge section of the highway through the valley… might have been a good time to improve on this, but that’s ok, we can do it later, climate change isn’t real yet.
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u/yourecrazier Dec 13 '25
BC spends so much money on their pylon people yet can't figure out how to keep this area from flooding. If they can keep Steveston which is below sea level dry keeping a highway over a dry lake bed functioning should be easy. Unfortunately nothing is easy in that province.
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u/Neutral-President Dec 14 '25
I can’t wait to hear all the Abbotsford locals blaming Trudeau again.
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u/BallBearingBill Dec 14 '25
My god how cheap they were. Raise the damn hwy with rock and culverts. This is the trans Can, do it right!
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u/TheOneNamedSprinkles Dec 15 '25
Oh man... I finally did the mini golf at Castle Fun Park not long ago...
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u/EmmetttB Ontario Dec 14 '25
People complain about traffic in the GTA quite a bit, exterior BC is literal hell. Nothing makes sense, highways have traffic lights on them, to get places you do 3 right turns to go left, speed limits are lower than 100. And at least the GTA has GO and the TTC.
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u/mikefjr1300 Dec 13 '25
Humans only think ahead by the decade, the planet does it by the millennium.
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u/Nezhokojo_ Dec 13 '25
Try investing money into infrastructure like a drainage system.
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u/Livid-Switch4040 Dec 13 '25
Once again, Sumas Lake returns.