A joint investment of $13 million will be used to upgrade a Richmond pump station and the surrounding diking system.
The funding will come from the federal and provincial governments as well as the city, according to an announcement made on Friday morning at Richmond City Hall.
The investment will fund the reconstruction of the No. 3 Road South Drainage Pump Station at Dyke Road to quadruple its pumping capacity and raise a section of the dike to connect the two sections, said Steveston-Richmond East MP Parm Bains.
"Upgrades will also include improvements to several sets of culverts and a new above-ground utility building, which will house a new motor control centre and a permanent backup generator," he added.
The majority of the funding will come from the provincial government at $8.1 million, while the federal government is investing $1.3 million in the upgrades. The rest will be covered by the City of Richmond.
Investment into flood protection for Richmond began around 1948 following a large flood, according to Mayor Malcolm Brodie.
"We have 49 kilometres of dikes here in the City of Richmond. Only a fraction of those have been upgraded to the higher levels," he said.
The short answer to how much money is still needed to complete the upgrades, said Brodie, is "How much have we got?"
The upgrades are "an unbelievably large project" to be done over many decades and will cost "hundreds of millions of dollars," he added.
Earlier in March, the city received $2.5 million from the province's Community Emergency Preparedness Fund to strengthen and replace riprap along the dike in Terra Nova and east Richmond.
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