CALGARY—The province plans to spend $130 million this year — more than three times its original estimate — to acquire land needed for a massive river diversion and dam to protect the city from future floods.

When the Springbank Off-Stream Reservoir was first announced by the previous government in 2014, the land needed was only forecast to cost about $40 million.

But as the project swelled in size to provide greater flood protection and officials arrived at more realistic values for property, the cost of the land component of the project skyrocketed to the current estimate of $140 million. The project’s budget now sits at $372 million, which hinges on the government’s ability to sell excess land it purchases.

The greater outlays on land has led to uncertainty for local landowners about whether or not their land will be affected. Ryan Robinson said he and other owners haven’t heard from the province since November, when federal regulators raised a series of environmental red flags about the plan to prevent flooding on the Elbow River.

“It’s cruel and unusual punishment for the families who live on this land,” Robinson said in an interview. “One day, the government is all hot to trot and then months go by and you don’t hear anything.”

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Land title documents obtained by the Star show the department already spent $9.6 million on land for the project, acquiring three quarter sections of land in the summer of 2016 at an average price of about $20,000 per acre.

Those purchases would suggest the province is fairly accurate in what it estimates it will need to pay for the 6,800-plus acres of scenic and rolling ranchland near Calgary, bounded by Highway 22 to the west, Highway 1 to the north and the Elbow River to the south.

Robinson, who is a spokesperson for owners of the land that the Alberta government wants to buy for the project, said two of the three parcels the province bought were sold by owners under financial duress and are not representative of the land’s fair market price.

“If they have to expropriate, the value will be based on its highest and best use,” Ryan Robinson said. “This is some of the most desired and expensive land in Alberta: property along Highway 1 on the way to Banff is one of the highest-income postal codes in the country.”

Much also turns on whether the province can make good on its plan to sell back excess portions of the full quarter sections it said it is prepared to purchase. In so doing, officials hope to reduce the net outlay for land from $140 million to the $80 million included in the project budget.

If the $60-million difference is included in the project cost, then the overall price tag swells to $432 million.

That figure is more than the $406-million cost of an alternative dam — on Crown land further upstream on the Elbow River near McLean Creek — that has the added advantage of offering protection from flooding to the town of Bragg Creek.

With the decision to opt for the Springbank project, the province is having to spend another $32 million for berms to protect that community from flooding.

Revised cost-benefit studies done for the province last summer found the Springbank project would prevent nearly $17 in damages for every $10 in cost.

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But that figure would fall to roughly $14 in savings for every $10 in cost if the $60 million is added to the project budget because the province is unable to sell off acquired land that is extraneous to its needs.

Those numbers would make the province’s McLean Creek option — and its roughly $14 in prevented damages for every $10 in cost — as good an option from a cost-benefit perspective.

With its ability to divert and store nearly half the one-in-200-year flow the Elbow River saw during the 2013 disaster, the Springbank project is among the most critical elements of the flood mitigation infrastructure needed to protect Calgary, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said.

“Calgarians have been patient as the project progresses, but now that it’s been nearly five years since the 2013 floods, we are very keen to see this project move forward,” Nenshi said in a prepared statement.

But when the additional $32 million for berming on Bragg Creek is added to the equation, Robinson said he doesn’t understand why the province is sticking with the Springbank project.

“The province wants to take away our land, and they’re using cooked-up numbers to justify the decision,” he said. “I hope saner heads will prevail in the end, but I think so far it’s been politically expedient to stick with this plan.”

Transportation Minister Brian Mason said he’s confident his government made the right choice about how to protect Calgary from future floods.

While the cost-benefit numbers don’t account for it, Mason said the project will also provide indirect protection for the city core, which is the province’s economic engine.

“During the 2013 event, the outflow of the Elbow River caused the Bow River to back up and flood the downtown,” he said.

While there would be no land-purchase costs, Mason also said a dam at McLean Creek wouldn’t protect the city from a stationary rain event downstream of its location in the foothills.

“You want to get your flood mitigation as close to Calgary as you can and Springbank does that.”

Matt McClure is a senior investigative reporter based in Calgary. Follow him on Twitter: @mattmcclure2

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