New Hamburg floods should worry us all
Last fall, Wilmot Township declared a climatechange emergency. Last weekend, it may have been dealing with one.
Torrential rainfalls, unusual for this time of year, sent the Nith River surging over the dam in New Hamburg, it’s levels rising to three-quarters the height of light standards in the park downtown.
Streets were closed. Basements were soaked. And as some residents stacked sandbags in front of main street businesses. Others got around their neighbourhood by canoe. It was a wet and wild time — hazardous, too, if you got too close to the river.
Flooding is common in this town situated on the banks of a Grand River tributary. But not floods like this, so early in the winter when there has been no massive run-off of melting snow and no sudden breakup of ice that holds the water back.
If we needed it, and we shouldn’t, New Hamburg’s latest inundation is a reminder of the hard work facing us all. Finding new ways to deal with severe and likely more frequent flooding is not just a challenge to this small town and township, but to all of Waterloo Region — indeed all of eastern Canada.
Keep in mind the latest local flooding wasn’t confined to New Hamburg. It hit parts of Cambridge, Ayr, St, Jacobs and West Montrose, too. What else would you expect after up to 100 millimetres of rain fell in the Grand River watershed on Saturday, the highest January rainfall on record in this part of Ontario?
We’re aware the debate over the world’s shifting climate patterns, the role humans play in the change and what people need to do about it is never-ending. Yet we also know the entire Grand River watershed, in which Waterloo Region lies, has been getting wetter for 100 years.
We know Ontario’s special adviser on flooding, Douglas McNeil, was assigned to report on the “devastating flooding” that occurred throughout northern and southern Ontario last spring. As that widespread crisis unfolded, 23 municipalities and one First Nation declared emergencies. Households, commercial properties, roadways and bridges all suffered serious damage. Lives were also often at risk.
Among a litany of recommendations, McNeil urged the provincial government to refer officially to the “impacts of a changing climate,” as it tries to cope with future floods.
And cope we must. As important as reducing greenhouse gas emissions is in fighting climate change, successfully doing this enough to make a real difference will take years.
That’s why we must also focus today — as never before — on protecting our communities from more unstable weather and more rain falling in shorter periods of time.
The City of Waterloo plans to do this, in part, by spending more on local flood control. And city residents should accept paying significantly higher stormwater management fees as a cost of living in 2020.
Wilmot Township, like other regional municipalities, has an action plan, too. After extreme flooding in New Hamburg in 2018, the township joined the Grand River Conservation Area in a search for ways reduce the dangers and impacts of new floods.
As one solution, the township plans to help turn land it owns into a 55-acre wetland park that could contain some of the future flood waters.
Of course, the township can’t do everything its own. Nor can Waterloo Region’s three cities or even the region itself.
This is a problem for Ontario and Canada and, therefore, for both the provincial and federal governments. As we face the flood waters inevitably coming our way, we must realize we’re all in the same boat.