New storm sewers are part of problem

I read about a lot of people talking about the city needing new sewers and that’s the reason for flooding. Not totally true.

I live in Riverside and have never flooded until last fall and again this August. After the flood last fall, I spent $15,000 on flood prevention, such as waterproofing outside, interior weeping tiles, a back-flow valve, a sewage pit and two sump pits.

My street had new sewers put in right before the flood last year. The problem is the very smart engineers at the city replaced our eight-inch sewers with 36-inch sewers. Sounds great, right? Bigger sewers can hold more water.

But when those big new sewers are connected to the existing eight-inch main at the end of our road, what’s going to happen? There is going to be a great deal of pressure that builds up causing everyone on St. John Street to flood.

There are 50 houses on our street and 49 flooded. The one house that didn’t flood disconnected his storm connection underground years ago and has not flooded since.

Considering we are in one of the lowest parts of the city, you think it would have been nice to disconnect them for everybody when they had our road ripped up. The city encourages everyone to disconnect their downspouts, but as long as you are connected to a storm sewer underground, no matter what you do, you are in trouble in a massive storm. Mike DesRosiers, Windsor