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City of Edmonton officials released details of a suggested $2.6-billion basement flood protection plan Monday, but say that will only protect neighbourhoods against the severity of storms Edmonton has already experienced.

It would take another $900 million to $2.1 billion to protect Edmonton’s mature neighbourhoods against the big one they think is coming, said Todd Wyman, the city’s director of long-range planning.

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That would be like the 2004 storm that hit Mill Woods and flooded 4,000 basements, but affecting five times the number of neighbourhoods at once, he said, picturing an intense downpour across roughly 30 square kilometres. “It’s really something we’ve never seen in the city.”

Basically all 160 of Edmonton’s older neighbourhoods are vulnerable to flooding, said Wyman.

Mill Woods and south-central Edmonton got hit in 2004 and 2012, but the next major storm cell could stall anywhere above Edmonton. That type of downpour would overwhelm the sewers, raise water levels on low points on local roads to above car windows and cause sanitary sewers to back up into residential basements.