Manitoba officials delivered another flood briefing on Wednesday, and the news was not good.

Storms in North Dakota and Saskatchewan mean several communities along the Souris River, including Melita, Souris and Wawanesa, will have to raise their dikes again.

Emergency Services Minister Steve Ashton says bad as that is, his heart goes out to the evacuees in Minot, N.D.

"I just can't imagine 11,000 people being evacuated from one community and the impact that's going to have," Ashton said. "They've been on flood alert for weeks. What's happening is it just keeps on coming and coming and coming on the Souris."

Winnipeg endures delays to lend hand

Some services in Winnipeg are being delayed as the city sends workers to help fight floods elsewhere.

In the past few months, the city has deployed about 700 workers to places such as Brandon and Portage la Prairie, and Coun. Paula Havixbeck is fielding complaints from people in her Winnipeg ward.

They include "complaints about roads that haven't been graded properly — people literally cannot leave their driveways — complaints about grass-cutting, weeding, mosquito spraying not happening yet."

Mayor Sam Katz acknowledges that some city services are suffering but says the province turned to Winnipeg for help with flooding elsewhere.

The mayor says he can live with delays in some services if it helps people in flood zones save their homes.

The rising water could take as much as two weeks to return to Manitoba. Two new crests are expected along the Souris in late June and possibly again in mid-July, which will give people time to prepare, the officials said.

In other developments, the Rural Municipality of St. Laurent is considering building earthen dikes that would leave hundreds of homes and cottages unprotected.

The idea is to build the dikes at the recreation centre at Sandpiper Beach and to protect the community of Oak Point, said St. Laurent Reeve Earl Zotter.

However, lakefront properties would not be protected, and there's nothing the municipality could do that would make a difference for residents, Zotter said.

The proposed dike would be "set back off of the beaches but the reason is … it is an earthen dike and with the wave action we do have in St.Laurent, there's no way it would stand up on the shoreline."

St. Laurent officials are meeting with a company that makes berms that go in the water to reduce wave action, which could help protect waterfront homes, Zotter said.

Once the municipality gets full reports and cost estimates, Zotter said, he will go to the province for help with funding.