Some residents of High River, Alta., want the option of completely leaving their homes after last month’s floods left the community devastated.

Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith, who’s also the MLA for High River, says she will advocate for residents who want the government to buy out their homes -- some of which were left underwater for weeks.

“Many in that neighbourhood want the option to move,” Smith told CTV Calgary. “I think these communities need to be bought out if there’s the belief that the house can’t be remediated.”

The Alberta government has signed a $45-million contract with Calgary-based Tervita, which specializes in disaster remediation, to spearhead the town’s cleanup.

Rick Fraser, the minister in charge of High River’s recovery, said the government is doing everything it can to get residents back to a “normal position.”

“They can be relocated if their houses sustained damaged,” he said, but added: “We don’t know what that looks like in terms of compensation.”

Meanwhile, residents of the Hampton Hills neighbourhood in High River -- one of the areas deemed uninhabitable following the floods -- have been told that the health hazards are too great to work inside their homes.

Samantha Woodland says at this point she would rather leave her house and move on.

“This community is destroyed and being left to remediate is just a pill I’m not ready to swallow,” she said.

Woodland said she and her husband will be celebrating their upcoming one-year wedding anniversary in a nearby trailer park instead of their home.

“(The government) is just keeping us in limbo,” she said. “They’re not letting us heal and move on.”

With a report from CTV Calgary’s Rylee Carlson