The summer of 2026 will be remembered for record-breaking rainfalls and multiple storms a week throughout June and July.

Close to a month since the onslaught of extreme weather calmed down, city-owned utility provider EPCOR provided a verbal update to the City of Edmonton’s utility committee about how it managed its response to the series of floods and other issues that emerged during the storms.

“I think the biggest takeaway from today was around communication and transparency,” said Keren Tang, city councillor for Ward Karhiio.

Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack agreed.

“It’s better to over-communicate in situations where you’re getting things like unprecedented weather, than to under-communicate and leave people feeling like they have to try and seek out that information,” Knack said.

On Monday, EPCOR said the July storms were unique and extreme in nature, straining infrastructure with minimal recovery time between storms.

According to Environment Canada, the city received more than 500 mm of rain over June and July — the highest volume in decades.

Multiple storms a week left the groundwater table so saturated that it stopped absorbing, sending more runoff than normal into the storm-water system — which then struggled to keep up.

EPCOR said a lengthy stretch of dry weather was needed to allow the system to recover.

The weather highlighted weaknesses in Edmonton’s aging storm-water network.

Last month, Knack admitted flood resiliency should have been started decades earlier as what used to be one-in-100-year floods are now more like one-in-10-year floods.

“A lot of our infrastructure held up the way we had envisioned it to,” Knack said on Monday. “Obviously there’s still more work to do.

“Not every area held up the way we wanted it to.”

Scores of homes in the city sustained water damage from sewage backups or overland flooding.

Major roads like Whitemud Drive, Yellowhead Trail, Groat Road and the interchange of Connors Road and the Low Level Bridge also turned into rivers and lakes.

“We’re going to look closely at our infrastructure and those cases, and see how over time we can make improvements to help mitigate those risks,” said Craig Bonneville, vice-president of planning, projects and engineering at EPCOR.

EPCOR and the city are looking at accelerating work on Edmonton’s storm-water system improvements, which is part of a 20-year, $1.6-billion storm-water resilience plan to upgrade infrastructure and minimize the flood risk.

The plan, launched in 2019, is now in its seventh year.

“It doesn’t happen overnight, it does take time to implement,” Tang said. “So if we want to implement all in one go, there’s huge financial, huge community impact that we have to keep in mind.”

The effects of the July storms took a heavy toll on several northwest Edmonton neighbourhoods, where a major road in and out of the area was washed away.

The July rains caused Horseshoe Creek to overflow and erode the banks around its culvert, leading to a stretch of 137 Avenue crumbling into the deep trench created by the floodwaters.

Big Lake-area residents were already waiting for EPCOR to expand the creek’s culvert to help with drainage. Residents say erosions concerns were raised a few years ago.

“As a utility ratepayer, you assume Epcor will step up and do the right thing — and in my opinion, they didn’t do that,” said Raf Tenderenda with the Big Lake Community League.

The road remains closed because of the washout, limiting access to the Starling and Hawks Ridge communities.

“Now we’re king of thinking, is the road going to be closed for the whole year? That’s kind of frustrating to see, the lack of action in the last two months — let alone the last two years.”

Bonneville said the nature of the storm events Edmonton experienced were unpredictable —  and to a degree, unprecedented — and simply overwhelmed the existing infrastructure in Big Lake.

The city has spent about $350 million so far on flood resiliency projects, including dry ponds and maintenance work on pipes and manholes.

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