The Town of Altona has applied to the Investing In Canada infrastructure program in an effort to improve the downtown drainage situation along 2nd Street.

Moderate to heavy rain events in the past have caused significant ponding along Second Street NE and in some instances residential and business properties have been flooded during larger rainfalls.

Town council hired J.R. Cousin Consultants in Winnipeg to conduct an engineering study back in 2017 to determine the cause of the issue and come up with some ideas on how to fix the problem. The best solutions to the ponding problem came with a price tag of nearly $1.5 million.

"It's a big-ticket item and an infrastructure cost that we just couldn't afford to absorb all on our own ... and if and when we were to proceed with this project, it would have to be with partners," said Mayor Al Friesen.

The Investing In Canada infrastructure program offers that kind of cost-sharing partnership between communities, and the provincial and federal governments.

The proposed downtown drainage project will involve installing a new lift station at the southeast corner of the 2nd Street NE and 4th Avenue NE intersection, installation of a force main from the lift station to the Highway 30 ditch and upgrades to land drainage sewer piping along 2nd Street NE north of the intersection.

The lift station will eliminate any ponding near that intersection during normal rainfalls and protect the same area from overland flooding during more significant rainfalls, while the upgraded land drainage sewer piping will reduce the ponding north of the intersection, taking advantage of the new lift station’s pumping capacity.

"It's designed to protect the town from a 1-in-100 year rain into the 2080s. It's also a recognition that climate change is impacting our community as well," Friesen said.

That's part of the reason the town has presented this project as green infrastructure under the category of Adaptation, Resilience and Disaster Mitigation.

The full price tag for the project is an estimated $2.2 million dollars. Altona's share of that would be just over $589,000 with the provincial and federal governments picking up the rest of the bill.

The town's application for funding was submitted last week. Friesen says they are hopeful the project will be approved for infrastructure dollars, but there's no guarantee.