Manitoba delays deliberate flood of vast area

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Manitoba has pushed back the timing of a planned break in its Assiniboine River dike to Thursday afternoon as residents scrambled to protect themselves from a deliberate flood of a vast area of farmland.

The province wants to open the dike to ease pressure on flood defenses and avoid a worse disaster, with the Assiniboine already causing flooding whose severity is said to occur only once every 300 years. The opening had been set for Thursday morning.

"It's going to be a tough call for sure, but the reality is that the same area, if the dikes break in an uncontrolled way, it would be hit by 15,000 cubic feet (of water) a second," Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger told a Winnipeg radio station Thursday. "It's about limiting damage to people, families, their homes and their properties."

Selinger, who faces an election in October, said the dike break will go ahead, but timing has not been finalized. The province said it won't happen before midday.

The deliberate flood will swamp an estimated 225 square kilometres, including 150 homes and about 56,000 acres of farmland. An unplanned dike break could affect twice as much land, according to the province.

Provincial officials have said they will control the rate of the water's release, which will be slow and gradually fill an area one third the size of the city of Toronto.

The flood will reach Gilles Legault's farm near Elie, Manitoba a day or two after the dike opens. His home is high enough that it should stay dry, but it's unlikely he'll plant his 3,000 acres this spring to cash in on high grain prices.

"We're talking weeks (of floodwater) here, so if I don't get my crop in when the commodity prices are where they are right now, a year where I can make some money, that's going to be a huge loss," Legault said. "It's going to be hard watching people seed all the way around you."

Legault has already moved 260 head of cattle to higher ground.

He said he's growing frustrated with a lack of information from the provincial government and the fact that it is sacrificing some properties to save others.

Across Manitoba, 2,900 people have left their homes because of flooding, including 1,200 in Brandon, the province's second-largest city.

About 1,000 soldiers arrived in Manitoba this week to hastily fortify dikes after provincial officials raised flooding projections, mainly because of heavy rain.

Saskatchewan is also seeing major flooding of farmland due to rain and spring melting on saturated ground. Much of Saskatchewan's floodwater drains into the Assiniboine and heads into Manitoba, where the river meets the Red River in Winnipeg, the provincial capital. Winnipeg is well protected this year.

In the United States, rising floodwaters on the Mississippi River have also displaced thousands of people and flooded much more farmland -- 3 million acres.

Manitoba has spent at least C$75 million ($77.3 million) fighting floods this year. Prime Minister Stephen Harper toured the area on Wednesday and Selinger said talks went well about special compensation for property owners in the controlled-release area.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)