Lessons for Toronto

As floodwaters recede and the people of Houston begin to bail out from hurricane Harvey, American authorities are rightly facing questions about whether they have adequately planned for the unprecedented storms made more devastating climate change.

Houston’s ordeal should also serve as a warning to Toronto’s leaders that our city, too, must protect itself from extreme weather.

There are lessons to be learned. Investigations by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica have revealed that over the past decade, even as major storms battered the Texas coast with alarming regularity, local officials supported land-use policies that rendered Houston more vulnerable to catastrophic weather.

Since 2011, 67,000 hectares of land around Houston has been developed, much of it on or near floodplains. Leaders stood by as the prairieland that historically soaked up rainwater was paved over by sprawl.

Toronto’s natural water systems are similarly threatened by development. In May, Mayor John Tory missed an opportunity to address this problem when his executive committee shelved a proposal for a new stormwater levy.

The idea was to charge property owners based on the area of hard surfaces, such as parking lots, walkways, and roofs, on their land. The levy would have had the dual benefit of raising $275 million a year to pay for the city’s stormwater plans, while also discouraging landowners from paving over the natural surfaces essential for flood protection.

The proposed charges were hardly onerous. Homeowners with properties of more than 100,000 square feet would pay a flat rate of $475 a year. And the fee would be offset by a 20-per-cent reduction in residents’ regular water bills, which currently fund the city’s stormwater plans.

Legitimate concerns were raised about the proposal, including the difficulty of accurately measuring the hard surfaces of 475,000 properties, and a lack of incentives for homeowners who already mitigate the impact of their properties by using rain barrels or other measures. But the problems weren’t insurmountable.

A dozen Canadian municipalities, including Mississauga, Calgary and Victoria, have all implemented similar charges.

City staff recommended that the mayor’s committee order more consultations and bring the proposal back for a decisive vote in 2019. But Tory shortsightedly ignored that advice and effectively killed off the plan.

He should instead have worked to fix the problems and sent the proposal to council for approval.

The recent flooding of the Toronto Islands, which rendered one of the city’s most popular natural attractions inaccessible for months and cost the city $5 million, has underscored the social and economic costs of further delay.

Council should revisit the stormwater charge plan and approve it as soon as possible. As the deluged residents of Houston know, waiting until the next big storm will be too late.

Houston’s ordeal should serve as a warning that our city must protect itself from extreme weather