The River Is Not the Same Anymore: Environmental Risk and Uncertainty in the Aftermath of the High River, Alberta, Flood

Even when individuals are aware of and well educated about environmental issues such as climate change, they often take little action to mitigate these problems. Yet, catastrophic events, such as disasters, have the potential to rupture or disrupt complacency toward environmental problems, forcing people to consider the potential effects of human activity on the environment as they expose how environmentally harmful practices put people at risk. This article is based on focus group interviews with 46 residents of High River, Alberta, a rural community hardest hit by the 2013 Southern Alberta flood. It examines whether and how experiencing the flood prompted residents to think about the environment or interact with it in new ways. Findings suggest that residents voice a contradiction-while they believe that preflood human activity such as deforestation, river diversion, and home building altered the environment and placed communities like their own at risk, they also argue that natural forces such as disasters are immune to human efforts to control them. Residents feel their environment is less stable and predicable since the flood, and they worry more about toxicity and associated environmental health risks. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for environmental sociology and public policy.