Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Ottawa’s deputy city manager says three flood-prevention measures for the Glen Cairn neighbourhood that was hit hardest a huge rainstorm in July were not completed because they were not practical or needed more study.
In a memo to council, Nancy Schepers said raising the road surface level at the northwest entrance of Dundegan Drive and placing an overflow channel and/or culvert at one part of Glamorgan Drive were not practical. Her memo did not explain why.
A third idea that involved lowering Castlefrank Road at Glamorgan Drive and building a drainage channel on the north side of Castlefrank required “more extensive analysis,” the memo said.
Schepers’ memo was prompted by an Aug. 5 Citizen story that reported a consulting engineers’ study commissioned by the city in 2003 recommended the changes to improve surface drainage in the southern part of Glen Cairn.
That neighbourhood had been flooded in 1996 and 2002, and the consultants, Cumming Cockburn, were looking for answers.
They warned the city that the south end of Glen Cairn had three major low spots and was “an area with a high flooding risk for properties.”
The report said that major flows of water from Castlefrank Road during storms had “nowhere to go” except the storm sewer system and that, when the storm sewer system became full, ponding would threaten houses with flooding. The consultants also reported that an entire basin area drained towards Dundegan Drive.
Those southern streets in Glen Cairn were hardest hit during the intense July 24 rainstorm that caused sewage and stormwater to flood basements. Every home on Dundegan was flooded. Some residents are no longer insured because of previous floods.
In her memo, Schepers emphasized that most of the other work recommended for Glen Cairn — such as improving the capacity of the Carp River and installing big culverts to handle storms — was completed at a cost of $7 million. She said the first phase of those improvements performed well during a heavy rainstorm in 2004. Schepers also said additional measures to reduce flooding will be evaluated, including the measures for Glen Cairn recommended in the 2003 Cumming Cockburn report.
Kanata South Councillor Peggy Feltmate said she still had questions to be answered at the Sept. 2 meeting of city council when the flooding issue is to be discussed. For instance, she wanted to know what the outcome might have been during the recent storm if the recommended projects had been carried out.
Feltmate said she wanted to see the city helping the flood victims — some of them of modest means — rather than pushing the issue towards a legal confrontation.
“I am feeling very frustrated with the whole thing,” Feltmate said. “Time’s ticking. We need to get this moving.”
Orléans Councillor Bob Monette said he hoped city staff would develop a plan to be used in future cases of flooding in the city. Hundreds of homes in his ward were affected by flooding in 2006.
“Staff now have two major occurrences that have happened in the east and the west of our community. We have to document and have a proper action plan,” he said.
“What was frustrating for the west-end councillors this time around was there was no prepared action plan in place.”
Monette and Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess said Thursday they hoped $4 million in upgrades to sewer pipes, catch basins, drainage systems and roads would stop flooding in their wards, where more than 800 residents were affected after storms in July and August 2006. Some Orléans residents also experienced flooding in 1996 and 1998.
Monette and Bloess said the infrastructure upgrades would be finished by the end of the summer.
“It doesn’t happen in one shot, there’s no quick fix,” Bloess said. “You try to work on a series of things and then you try to piece them all together.”