It huffed and puffed and flowed, but it couldn’t breach Richmond’s robust diking system.
Last week’s king tide tried its best to overcome the city’s 49 kilometres of dykes.
But they stood firm, although, as you can see from a Richmond resident's photos, the tide surge came relatively close to the West Dike between Francis and Williams roads, leaving behind a trail of log booms.
The Richmond News recently published a series of features on the city’s diking system, reporting how, during the massive s three-day rainstorm in November, Richmond’s 39 pumps moved about 18 million cubic metres of water.
This brought its system to 79 per cent capacity, moving 1.1 million U.S. gallons (924,000 Cdn gallons) per minute.
Sea level rise – predicted at a metre by the year 2100 – and stronger storm surges due to climate change prompted city council to move up its timeline of shoring up the dykes by 25 years – the original goal was to complete it in 75 years.
