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Moratorium needed until flooding issue in certain areas fixed, Feltmate says
OTTAWA — Kanata South Councillor Peggy Feltmate says she wants a moratorium on development in parts of Kanata until the city gets to the bottom of the area’s repeated floods.
The councillor on Friday said she is working on a moratorium motion that would go to city council’s planning and environment committee, perhaps as early as Aug. 25, then on to council.
She said the Kanata area’s third serious flood in 13 years has convinced her that the city does not have the information in hand to allow more development and, potentially, more flood risk.
Glen Cairn, in her Kanata South ward, saw flooding in 1996, again in 2002 and a third time on July 24 during an intense rainstorm. On one street, sewage backed up into every home. Across Kanata and Stittsville, about 1,000 homes saw flooding and three wastewater pumping stations overflowed in the western part of the city.
“What’s sobering about it for me is that everybody thought there was a fix after the second time. That’s what’s so distressing and difficult,” said Feltmate. “The sooner we do this (moratorium) the better.”
The City of Ottawa spent about $7 million over the last few years on drainage work in the Glen Cairn area, including increasing the capacity of the Carp River and the ability of culverts to take water away from residential areas.
Feltmate said some development projects approved years ago may not meet modern planning standards and could contribute to further flooding in Kanata. She said she is refining exactly what area would be covered by a moratorium. She noted that Glen Cairn, mostly built in the 1970s, was constructed without stormwater facilities.
One of the city’s own current projects, the construction of the Terry Fox Drive extension, could be part of the debate about future development in Kanata. That $47-million road project runs by environmentally sensitive lands in Kanata and involves taking out a significant amount of floodplain: About 30 per cent of the new road, or 1.5 kilometres, is plotted through the floodplain of the Carp River.
The proposed road, linking north and south Kanata, runs by the Carp River and requires realignment of a creek, construction of stormwater facilities, building a crossing facility for animals and avoiding nearby sensitive natural areas.
The city’s managers for the project plan to replace the lost floodplain by lowering other lands in the area. But Ottawa Riverkeeper executive director Meredith Brown says it’s a bad idea to take out floodplain and alter natural drainage patterns. She is concerned the development that’s been allowed in Kanata so far may have contributed to flooding problems.
Feltmate said the proposed design for the Terry Fox Drive project will be public in the third or fourth week of September, allowing for debate about whether the road goes ahead.
The councillor, who was out of the country when the most recent flood hit, has sent city staff a bunch of questions about the flooding. One of the critical ones still outstanding is whether drainage work recommended in 2003 by a city consultant was done in Glen Cairn’s most southern streets, where the flood hit hardest. Feltmate believes the work was not done and she wants to know why.
The chairman of city council’s planning and environment committee, Peter Hume, said a moratorium on development in the Kanata area may be welcomed by the public. He said people want to know that the city’s systems work well before allowing more building to occur. He said the city must take care to include in the moratorium area only the lands where drainage is a concern.
“We have to be doing things to build public trust,” said Hume. “I think the public will say that’s the right thing to do.”
He said there was strong pressure to approve the growth project, but council must be assured that the road will not adversely affect drainage in the area.
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