Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
A park in Lachine, Que., will become soon help Montreal avoid future flooding. The city is redesigning Brewster Park, near Lac Saint-Louis, using concepts from the realm of phytotechnology — the application of plants to solve engineering and science problems — to make it into a "sponge park" that will absorb water during heavy rainfall events.
The city says it wants to create more green spaces that can act as sponges, so water gets absorbed into the ground rather than drained into sewers during rain deluges. Firefighters were deployed to help pump water out of buildings. Sabourin said the city typically gets 90 millimetres of rain in July — meaning Montreal received almost as much rain it usually sees in July in the span of two hours. The city's sewers simply don't have the capacity to hold that much water, he said, explaining the floods. The area south of the downtown core was most affected.
The costs and damages of flooding are overwhelming communities along coasts, near rivers and on big lakes. Across the country, urban floods are happening at a rate and extent that is pushing disaster resilience to the forefront of public safety discussions. We all pay the price of more frequent flooding, even if the danger and damage are happening in someone else’s town. In fact, the Insurance Institute of Canada reports that the multi-billion-dollar cost of insurance claims is on track to more than double over the course of a decade.
At the most basic level, rain gardens function like sponges. They are typically made by digging five or so feet into the ground, adding layers of rock and soil mixes designed to absorb and filter water, and topping the layers with flowers, trees, and shrubs. A finished rain garden should dip like a bowl about half a foot below ground level so that when it rains, the garden can temporarily fill up, allowing water to percolate into the ground rather than run into the street.
Extreme rainfall caused by climate change could cost municipalities in Ontario an additional $700 million a year to maintain stormwater and wastewater infrastructure, the province's financial watchdog warns. In a new report released on Tuesday, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) says severe weather will cost municipalities millions more in the coming decades if local governments do not spend the money now to keep aging infrastructure in a state of good repair.
The director of Hamilton Water Nick Winters is recommending a risk-based strategy to long-term inspection of Hamilton’s 1,841 kilometres of sewers, with the director suggesting a new type of inspection system may have to be created. The approach is in contrast to the initial action plan promised by Ontario Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) David Piccini Nov. 24, two days after Hamilton Water staff discovered a 26-year-old misalignment of sewer and storm sewer pipes that has resulted in sewage being funnelled from an east Hamilton neighbourhood into Hamilton Harbour.
Heavy downpours are causing flooding concerns for some Saskatchewan communities. Environment and Climate Change Canada issued rainfall warnings Friday for southeastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba. The weather agency says a low-pressure system coming up from North Dakota is bringing widespread rainfalls of 30 to 60 millimetres — which can cause flash floods, water pooling on roads and localized flooding in low-lying areas — and wind gusts up to 80 km/h.
With so-called one-in-100-years storms happening at least once a year now in Hamilton, Miranda Burton says preparing for potential flooding is more urgent than ever. And that's why her organization is trying to mobilize people to do just that. Burton, program manager for the Hamilton not-for-profit Green Venture, says they're trying to get Hamiltonians to look at overland water flow differently.
It's a problem that's costing the City of London about $1.4-million a year while adding to the risk of basement flooding. The engineering term is "inflow infiltration," but a report coming to the city's Civic Works committee on Tuesday uses a simpler one: Unwanted water. Essentially, it's water that ends up in the city's sewer system that shouldn't be there.
A $1 device developed at Dalhousie University in Halifax that can help detect COVID-19 in wastewater has been shipped across Canada and around the world to help researchers and public health in the battle against the deadly respiratory illness. The device is a small, spherical cage that contains an absorbent pad to collect samples from sewer systems. The specimens are then analyzed using lab equipment to determine whether COVID-19 is present in the wastewater.
Twenty-three-year-old PhD student Emalie Hayes is currently studying Civil Engineering at Dalhousie University. Last year, she created a COVID-19 testing device that can detect the virus through sewers. The COVID-19 sewer cage, called the Cosca, is made by a 3D printer out of plastic, which takes several hours to print, and is then assembled by hand, which takes less than a minute.
