Two Beaver Dams Break and the Water Pours Through Wilberforce...

Hours after two beaver dams broke north of Wilberforce last Friday morning, water continued to flood County Road 648 and County Road 4 as well as several small municipal and private roads, not to mention flooding back yards and causing serious concerns over houses being flooded or undermined. The initial rush of water took out a culvert on Cedar lake road, effectively closing that municipal road for a number of hours. Flooding also washed out a private entrance at Mountain Lake and continued on from there washing out approximately 3 feet x 100 feet of shoulder along CR-4 at Cockle Lake. Despite the fact that water levels had gone down considerably by mid morning, Doug Ray, Director of the Haliburton County Roads Department and Earl Covert, Highlands East Roads Superintendent, were both on site keeping a very close eye on the situation. When asked what they could do, Ray had a practical response. “We’ll just have to wait until the water goes down and then fix the roads.” Roy Haig, the County’s Manager of Engineering & 911 Services later said that it’s hard to explain why two dams would break at the same time. Haig said that they had no reports of vandalism and speculated that it was simply a matter of old dams letting go. According to Haig, there was enough force to take out another beaver dam along CR-4 causing flooding in Cockle Creek Estates and eventually crossing CR-648 by the Lloyd Watson Memorial Centre and causing damage to the shoulder and entrance to Buttercup Lake. According to Ray the water and resulting damage was relatively tame compared to similar situations that he had experienced in the past. But if you asked Lynn Waugh if it was tame, she might not agree. As much as 10 inches of water rose against Waugh’s house, which is sitting fairly flush with the ground and neighbours called the couple, fearing that the water would wash the house off its foundation. Several hours later, water was still flowing through the couple’s yard and partially constructed shed and water flowing through large culverts behind their house continued to flood neighbouring back yards. Reeve Dave Burton confirmed that a considerable amount of gravel had been washed away on Jacks Lane, a private road that intersects with CR-648. Municipal road crews, concerned that the water could reach the service station on CR-648, built a berm during the course of the event to ensure there was no fuel contamination. Once the flow of water subsided County and municipal crews continued to work through the evening to repair the damage, but estimates of costs to repair the damage were still being tallied at press time.