Flood mitigation measures approved
CBRM council has given the green light to proceed with the first phase of a multi-year project aimed at mitigating flooding in Sydney’s Wash Brook watershed.
The municipality’s public works director, Wayne MacDonald, said while the mitigation measures are not expected to put an end to the flooding in the lowlying area in Sydney’s south end, it comes down to a case of something being better than nothing.
“Everything we’re recommending is to better the Wash Brook watershed in how it responds to rainfall events — we believe that any mitigation will benefit the entire area to some degree, whether that is large or small, going forward,” said MacDonald.
On Tuesday, council approved a motion to direct municipal staff to go ahead with what has come to be known as Option 15, a recommendation that came out of an engineering firm’s report that was made public in mid-June.
The first phase of the option calls for a flow control device to be built at Mud Lake, located on higher ground east of Highway 125 between the Mira Road and Grand Lake Road interchanges. Funding for the $473,000 project is already in place and is being split equally by the municipality and the province.
The flow control device is essentially a glorified culvert that allows bodies of water such as Mud Lake to retain much larger volumes of water during times of heavy precipitation. The 2016 Thanksgiving Day storm resulted in extensive flooding across the municipality after more than 225 millimetres of rain fell in just a few short hours. In Sydney alone, more than 20 houses were ruined and later demolished after the Wash Brook flooded its banks.
MacDonald said his department is in favour of the flood mitigation measures even though it’s assumed that the initiatives will not completely put an end to rising waters in times of great precipitation events.
“The retention pond and flow control devices are designed to control the peak flow, but the lower reaches of the Wash Brook are very susceptible to the effects of tides, so you can store water in other areas, but you are affected by the effects of tidal change (at the harbour end of the stream), he said.
The second stage of Option 15 would see a flow control structure built at Gilholmes Lake, not far from Mud Lake, while the third and final phase calls for the construction of a retention pond somewhere in the low-lying area near the Baille Ard Nature Trails. The latter two stages (estimated to cost $128,000 and $3.5 million respectively) of Option 5 are expected to take up to five years to complete.
MacDonald said he’s hopeful the municipality can take advantage of whatever funding programs are available.
“We’re always looking to the federal and provincial governments for whatever is available in funding and there is some upcoming federal funding,” he said, adding that the CBRM is looking to be part of a multi-municipality, province-wide application for monies from Ottawa’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Funding program. The deadline for applying for those funds is the end of July.