STORMWATER PROBLEMS
City report links parkway drainage to flooding
A report that dissects why a single South Windsor neighbourhood was deluged with basement flooding during an Aug. 28 rainstorm points to the nearby provincially owned Herb Gray Parkway as one possible culprit.
“While investigating the stormwater infrastructure within the city, it was discovered that a drain on the Herb Gray Parkway was partially obstructed,” says the report that goes to council Monday. The report includes post-flood photos showing the Cahill Drain along Cousineau Road obstructed with debris as it enters the provincially-owned parkway. “While a blockage was observed, it is not currently known if or to what extent the blockage contributed to the flooding that occurred in Ward 1.”
The report described the parkway as a “contributing factor,” along with high water levels in the Detroit River that backed up Turkey Creek and the drainage system for South Windsor, as well as climate change. It says the city's infrastructure, including pumping stations and pollution control plants, worked appropriately and there were no blockages in storm sewers.
Of the 413 calls made to the city's 311 service that day reporting basement flooding, 241 came from streets like Mount Royal and Longfellow Avenue, between Cabana and Cousineau roads. Neighbours say the true number of flooded basements is more like 400. Those interviewed by the Star on Friday report damage in the $40,000 to $60,000 range.
Ward 1 Coun. Fred Francis said he's going to need more answers Monday on what role the five-yearold parkway played in the flood.
“Six years on council, when I read something like that (in the report), I'm reading between the lines that, ` We might think there might be a problem there but we don't know for sure and we don't want to say so without having absolute 100 per cent proof,' ” Francis said.
When you have a small pocket of South Windsor homes so severely hit with flooding, “that tells some that there's a problem somewhere,” said Francis.
“If the fault's on the city, then fine, the fault's on the city, but if the fault's on someone else or some other organization, then I want to know who, what, where, why and when, and how can we prevent it from happening again?”
Ontario's Ministry of Transportation was unable to provide a response by deadline on Friday.
City engineer Mark Winterton, who authored the report, said the parkway is possibly a contributing factor, “but we can't say definitively.”
The biggest factor, he said, was that the area received more rain than most other places in the city — more than 100 mm compared to 64 mm in the east side. Many of the older homes in the area, he added, had not taken up the city's offer of up to $2,800 in grants for such flood protection measures as backup valves and sump pumps, as well as free downspout disconnections.
As a result, when rain falls in huge volumes, it runs off the roof, into the downspouts and weeping tiles and into the sanitary sewer, which is not able to handle such high volumes of rainwater. The result is surcharging, where the fluid backs up in the drains and into people's basements. Residents on Aug. 28 reported water gushing upwards like fountains.
One of the recommendations in Winterton's report is approving a pilot project ordering mandatory downspout disconnections for a large swath of South Windsor, from Norfolk Street to the Herb Gray Parkway. Only four per cent of homes in the city have taken advantage of the voluntary program, said Winterton.
“We strongly, strongly encourage it, and in this case, we're recommending mandatory. We're going to come in, we're going to force you to disconnect.”
Downspout disconnection is one of the quick-fix, lower-cost solutions included in the city's sewer master plan which envisions spending $4.9 billion to address basement and overland flooding in the coming decades. Winterton said if every house in Windsor was disconnected, the result would be “huge.”
“To a large extent, it would solve a great deal of the problems ... just because all the water isn't going into the sanitary sewer anymore.”
Francis agrees the pilot project is necessary and that eventually disconnection should be mandatory across the city.
“It allows us to remove so much water in the system that we could make a significant difference immediately.”
But residents were largely dismissive of the report's findings and recommendations.
“I think it's a bunch of malarky myself,” said Mount Royal Drive resident Glenn Willis, who was insured for the $50,000 in damages caused by the storm. He doesn't buy that rising river levels and climate change were to blame, because they would have affected everyone, not just people in his neighbourhood.
“We've got people who've never been flooded in 60 years and then all of a sudden we all get flooded and the rest of the city is fine? I just don't want it to happen again and we never had any problem until they did the parkway.”
Another Mount Royal resident, Kevin Page, has a different theory — that recent improvements to the Lennon Drain running just south of Cabana created a bottleneck that backed up rainwater. But Winterton said that's simply not true. He said the improvements improved the flow.
Total damage to people's basements was in the millions of dollars. Some weren't covered by insurance, including Mount Royal resident Barb Branton.
“I am stone broke with all this flooding. I spent $40,000 on my basement redoing it, it was just destroyed,” she said. She called the report a “bunch of fluff.”