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Controversial housing developments that could affect the flood-prone Glen Cairn neighbourhood edged closer to reality Tuesday as the city’s planning and environment committee approved a funding arrangement with developers for sewer upgrades in the area.
The upgrades are to allow for the eventual construction of 17,000 homes, as well as offices and retail stores, in the Fernbank and Kanata West areas.
Critics argue that the city should not aid development in this area — or perform any work on the sewer system — until it has understood and addressed the causes of flooding to existing communities nearby.
Those communities could be prone to even more flooding if new developments add pressure to the sewage system.
“Why are we building houses here?” said Capital Councillor Clive Doucet. “When this place experiences difficulties in terms of evacuating the sewage and controlling the waterflow, who is going to be liable? Because I’m sure it’s going to happen.”
The committee approved an arrangement that would allow the development companies that own the Kanata West and Fernbank lands to fund a new pump and pipe at the existing Hazeldean sewage pumping station, and to pay for a design study of a new sewage pumping station in Kanata West.
The $1.6 million cost would be refunded to the developers through development charges collected by the city.
Guy Bourgon, a program manager with the city, said these improvements are needed to accommodate future development, no matter the outcome of the investigation into the causes of the July 24 flood that swamped Glen Cairn and other neighbourhoods on the city’s west side.
That report is to be completed in August 2010.
Bourgon said any suggested sewer improvements that emerge as a result of that review will be carried out “in lock-step” with these works.
“We’re doing a co-ordinated approach on design. We’re looking at the short term and the long term. (The long-term solution) doesn’t preclude works from taking place in the interim.”
But engineer Ted Cooper, a persistent critic of the watershed planning in Kanata, argued that the approach can’t be co-ordinated, as the city claims, if the sewer works go ahead before the investigation is complete.