Landslide prevention in Fort St. John gets council support for $4M grant 

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – The City of Fort St. John council has approved a grant application to a provincial grant for the purpose of conducting natural disaster risk reduction efforts in 2025.

Staff approached Mayor Lilia Hansen and councillors during the October 28th council meeting about applying for the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) Community Emergency Preparedness Fund Disaster Risk Reduction Grant. 

In the application, staff would outline a need for a grant of $4,207,300, which would go towards three categories of activities aimed towards protecting a portion of the City of Fort St. John’s stormwater drainage area in and around the Bouffioux Coulee. 

“[The area] has been experiencing landslide and erosion issues for decades, which has been documented in multiple reports in the area. Recently, landslides at the coulee have retrogressed to put City infrastructure at risk, including the lift station, and stormwater drainage channel,” City staff wrote in the report to council.

The city has previously utilised this fund, receiving $2,145,000 in 2023 for safety work to sewer and stormwater infrastructure.

The project would be split into three categories of work, with the first two consisting of risk mapping and assessments, as well as historical data updates. 

The final category would consist of ‘small-scale structural projects’ aimed primarily at protecting existing city infrastructure from future natural disasters, including landslides and erosions. 

During the October 30th episode of Council Corner, Councillor Tony Zabinsky confirmed that once the funds have been allocated to the city for the project, the city is then under a two-year deadline to complete the work.