BY ROBERT SIMMS
TORONTO - Residents of southern Manitoba, one of Canada's prairie provinces, are fighting the worst flood in 171 years. Some 25,000 farmers, rural townspeople, and Winnipeg residents have been forced to evacuate their farms and homes.

A giant lake up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide extends along the length of the Red River and several tributaries from just south of Winnipeg into North Dakota.

The losses and hardship facing those evacuated in both Manitoba and North Dakota are devastating. So far in Manitoba more than 800 farmsteads and homes have been flooded out. Many more farmers, while their house and farm buildings may be above floodwaters or diked, have their land underwater. Many farmers have had to evacuate their livestock or send it prematurely to be slaughtered. One farmer was forced to sell 40,000 chickens to processors. Tens of thousands of pigs and cattle have been moved to temporary quarters, and farmers face problems of finding feed for them.

Estimates of flood damage to public infrastructure alone run as high as CAN$75 million (US$1=CAN$1.40), while damage to family-owned property could run into the hundreds of millions.

The government has refused full compensation to flood victims. They are offering up to CAN$100,000 in assistance for those who can afford to pay the first 20 percent in damages. This deal will exclude large numbers of working people. Ottawa has pledged only CAN$25 million in flood relief.

The town of Ste. Agathe, where 500 people live, was submerged when a temporary dike failed. Several towns in the river valley have permanent ring dikes, which are holding, but they are empty of residents. The land could be underwater for weeks.

The city of Winnipeg has been relatively protected from the deluge by a floodway system built in the 1960s after a devastating flood in 1950. The floodway diverts a considerable portion of the river's flow around the city. While most of the towns on the flood plain also have permanent dikes around them, farmland and farm buildings are unprotected.

The damage is even more severe in North Dakota and Minnesota, where 60,000 people were forced from their homes and farms. The city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, was hit by severe flooding when city authorities underestimated the scope of the rising floodwaters and then fire demolished three city blocks. Estimates of the losses exceed US$1 billion. Some 1.7 million acres of cropland is underwater there and unavailable for spring planting. A combination of an extremely cold winter, blizzards, and the flood, has killed up to 100,000 cattle in the state - 10 percent of its livestock.

Ottawa has sent in 7,000 soldiers from across the country to help in dealing with the Manitoba flood - in the largest operation of the Canadian Armed Forces since the Korean War. Both the government and the big-business media are consciously using this particular initiative to try to buttress the image of the Canadian military. Acts of torture, murder, and beatings by its members in Somalia, and sexual assaults and black marketeering in Bosnia have been front page news in recent years.

Four of the eight large photographs of people fighting the flood in the Toronto Globe and Mail have been soldiers, though they are a small percentage of the volunteer sandbaggers and dike builders.

Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien has come under considerable criticism for calling a federal election just as the crest of the floodwaters was approaching Manitoba from North Dakota. He flew into Winnipeg April 26 to make an appearance at a dike, then flew back to Ottawa to announce the election the following day.

This deluge and the fact that flooding is a periodic danger facing the valley are in large part the result of the impact capitalist agricultural practices have on land and water management.

Southern Manitoba is a flat plain that is a glacial lake bottom formed when the Ice Age glaciers were retreating. The Red River valley, which before European settlement was full of swamps and wet grasslands, is one of the most densely drained regions in the world. The drainage ditches speed spring runoff, allowing machinery onto the land earlier. This lengthens the growing season in this northerly region, providing one protection against crop failure. The drainage also burdens the river with faster runoff and increased risk of flooding.

Retired University of Manitoba zoology professor William Pruitt noted in an interview that other practices contribute to the problem as well. He pointed to "the system of land tenure we have, where land is divided into sections and quarter-sections a half mile on a side, which prevents superior land management practices like contour plowing. That would allow the land to absorb more water and slow runoff." He added that a general reevaluation of crop practices should follow. For example, farmers could be encouraged to grow cops like various types of hay that are suited to wetter land.  
 
 
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