Mixed reviews for flood meeting

Ward 36 Flooding meeting Q & A

Last night’s flooding meeting hosted by Ward 36 Councillor Gary Crawford is getting mixed reviews from residents whose basements flooded with sewage and stormwater this summer.

About 150 people attended the meeting, which took place in two separate rooms at the Scarborough Village Recreation Centre.

In one room, there was a rolling 40 minute presentation by Toronto Water that included a Q & A session.

In the second room, there were information booths where homeowners could talk one-on-one with experts about issues such as sewer inspections, the backwater subsidy program and making a claim against the City of Toronto.

Questions and Answer Sessions

In the Q and A sessions Toronto Water spokesman Ted Bowring gave a basement flooding 101 presentation.  To its credit, Toronto Water had revised the presentation since the Ward 35 meeting two weeks ago and it included many questions raised by Ward 36 residents, including some posted in Birch Cliff News:

• 

  Looking down a sanitary sewer (separated)

  Q:  Have the sewers been inspected in Ward 36?  (Yes and they are in surprisingly good shape)

• Q:  Did the new subdivisions at Warden/St. Clair and Midland/St. Clair contribute to the flooding?  (No because developers submit plans proving the discharge will not increase from what was there before.
• Q:  Why do homes with backwater valves flood?   (Because the valves were blocked or installed incorrectly)

Bowring reiterated Toronto Water’s position that the flooding was caused by an unusually severe storm but many people still aren’t buying it.

Toronto Water's Ted Bowring

One of those people is Kevin Griffin, whose Rhydwen home has flooded more than once despite disconnecting his downspout 25 years ago, waterproofing the foundation and ensuring surface water had elsewhere to go.

“They have their mantra that says this shouldn’t be a problem.  Part of that mantra is that it’s a one in 100-year storm.  This isn’t the only flooding event.  Some of the work they’ve done

to separate the infrastructure is laudable but it’s nowhere near what’s necessary to protect the area,” Griffin says.

Others were upset because they say Toronto Water’s message focusses more on what homeowners need to do and minimizes the city’s responsiblity.

“All in all I feel disconcerted; the onus seems to be on the homeowners. I didn’t pump a foot of excrement into my basement, the city’s inadequate sewer did. Yet my family is now out of pocket and traumatized,” says Chris Morris, whose home flooded in the Chine north area.

Homeowner Shelley Allen, who lost everything in her Eastwood Avenue basement including a full kitchen, took exception to the city’s list of basement flooding causes.

“It was all about YOUR eavestroughs. YOUR downspout. YOUR grading,” Allen says.   If you look at the list of reasons why your basement floods, the City reasons were only the last two bullet points.”

Carolyn Flear of Kalmar Avenue says she appreciated the basement flooding 101 session but wasn’t happy when she asked if the City is monitoring new subdivisions to ensure their sewer discharge plans are being followed.  They are not monitoring.

Ward 33 Councillor Shelley Carroll

At the liveliest of the sessions, a bit of a shouting match erupted between Ward 36 residents and Councillor Shelley Carroll, who was invited by Councillor Crawford to give advice because her ward flooded extensively in 2005.

Carolyn Flear says they were discussing the lengthy timeline for repairs and the city’s recently announced $115 million dollar surplus when Carroll told the crowd they had to talk to Mayor Ford.

“So I got angry,” Flear says. “I said “excuse me, you’re our councillors!”

Carroll also ruffled feathers when she said that entire streets in her ward banded together and hired the same  plumber to install backflow valves in every house.

“She said you need to lobby your neighbours to do upgrades to their house and that it’s your responsibility to get your neighbours to spend money that they potentially don’t have,” says Shelley Allen.  I have a single mom with three kids on one side and a senior on a pension on the other. They don’t have the money to do all these things.”

Reaction was similarly mixed at the information booths next door.

Chris Morris felt the info stations were redundant:

“We knew all the information within days of the flood- one tends to get educated in a crisis if one intends to survive.”

Melissa Mercer says the information folks were very attentive and interested in the issues at Chine north and promised they would follow-up.

“They listened for a very long time to me and my neighbours. Most walked away feeling like we made good connections. I gave them a photocopy of our subdivision with every house that flooded highlighted. It sends a very powerful message and demonstrates how devastated our neighbourhood was by this flood.”

In addition, Birch Cliff News spent quite a while talking to Toronto Water’s Director of Infrastructure Michael D’Andrea about the six infrastructure improvements that could alleviate basement flooding in this post.  You can read about that here.