September snow tree damage tally could reach $18M

The City of Calgary has so far spent $7 million responding to last month's snowstorm, council was told on Monday.

But the final tally related to the storm could reach $18 million.

The unseasonably early snowfall damaged thousands of trees across the city perhaps as much as half of Calgary's tree canopy.

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Cleaning up the fallen branches will take until the end of this year, city parks officials told council.Its estimated pruning and re-planting all the damaged trees could take up to three years.

The city plans to apply to the province and Ottawafor financial assistance.

"We'll cover it for now and hopefully the province and the federal government will come in with disaster relief funding," Mayor NaheedNenshisaid.

"I'll tell you one interesting thing though ...typically, disaster relief funding does not assist us in replacement. And we got a lot of replanting to do and that's going to be a very big bill as well."