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Backer reflects on Mattawa flooding a year ago

May 6 marked a year since the Otto Holden Dam on the Ottawa River gave the residents of Mattawa 20 minutes to prepare their homes for the water to rise 10 feet.

For Mayor Dean Backer, he remembers it like it was yesterday.

“I work in North Bay and what I usually do is I get back to Mattawa at 4:00 p.m., and until about 6:30 p.m. I put in time for the municipality and coordinate meetings during that time,” he explained. “At about 4:10ish, I was in with a constituent who had a concern and all of sudden I heard a knock on my door and it was my CAO saying ‘Ontario Power Generation (OPG) just called, we have 10 feet of water coming towards us in the next 20 minutes.’”

“I looked at him and said ‘what does that mean?!’ and he said that we had to move now or parts of Mattawa was going to flood,” Backer added. “He took the initiative along with staff to build a berm on Mattawan Street that was about 250 feet long and 12 feet high. It was amazing to see and I’ll tell you, we were moving.”

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A building at the Mattawa marina during the flooding. (Kortney Kenney MyNorthBayNow.com staff)

The word Mattawa means “meeting of the waters” in the Algonquin language, so it is fitting that Mattawa’s town hall is on the banks where the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers meet. However, on that day, Backer says he couldn’t admire the scenery.

“From where our town hall is, you could literally see the water rising per minute,” he said. “Not only was it frightful, but I was also mesmerized by how quickly it came.”

Even with all the panic, Backer says he is proud of the residents of Mattawa who came together during the crisis.

“As tough as it was, it was rewarding to see the amount of work from not just my staff but the people of Mattawa put towards the flood itself,” he said. “Any given time there were 300 to 400 people for two weeks straight that were bagging. They bagged 6-7000 sandbags and they saved half of the community of Mattawa.”

But the cherry on top came in the form of a compliment receive a week later from the military.

“It was a beautiful day, the long weekend in May, and part of our berm was letting go and Main Street is 10 to 15 feet away,” he explained. “If we were to lose that berm, I’m sure there would have been casualties because Main Street was packed. Our staff worked right around the clock to secure the berm and I took the notion to call the military because it became bigger than us.”

“When the military came and walked the berm, I asked if the Sargent Major could send us some men,” Backer added. “He looked at me and said the most rewarding thing I have heard in 20 years as mayor. He said ‘sir, there is no amount of men that I can bring to you to do what your constituency hasn’t already done, they did a fantastic job.’ As tough as it was, that was like ‘wow, we did it!’”

The little lighthouse on Mattawa Island with water halfway up its side. The island was completely submerged. (Kortney Kenney MyNorthBayNow.com staff)

With the lessons learned after the disaster a year ago, Backer believes all parties can avoid a similar situation moving forward.

“One thing from last year that has improved is the communication with the officials between OPG and the Ottawa River regulatory people,” Backer continued. “We are in constant contact. What transpired last year, we can’t change that. I truly believe that last year was the perfect storm with the amount of rain and snow that we had and it was that 100-year flood situation.”

As for rebuilding, Backer says the provincial government has stepped in to help.

“We just received great news in the last month or so that the province is coming good for a lot of damages, which is our streets, to the tune of $2.3 million,” he said. “Just recently we got some money for our bridge on top of the Mattawa River that connects both sides of town, and it’s going to fix all the damaged areas of Mattawa and you will see a lot of construction over the next six to eight months to fix what was broken.”

With the funding on the way, Backer says Mattawa can finally return to how it once was, maybe even for the better.

“We basically barricaded parts of town, especially the streets beside the Mattawa River,” Backer stated. “We were waiting for funding announcements, however, if we didn’t receive those dollars, we were prepared to fix it but we were waiting for the province to say yes or no. We are so thankful to Mr. Fedeli and his government came through for us. Not only will it help our budget deliberation, but it will bring us up to speed and up to date on our infrastructure in town.”

“I feel confident in the prosperity and the beauty of Mattawa will take place,” he added.

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