An immense undertaking of projects are scheduled to start in 2019 for Windsor according to Construction Links. These include upgrades to pumping stations, sewer replacements and even rebuilding roads - all aimed at reducing basement flooding in the east end over the next 10 years.
Mayor Drew Dilkens stated that the city will apply for $32.1 million in funding from infrastructure, Canada's Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, which gives grants of up to 40 percent of a municipality's expenses for this type of work. Dilkens also stated that with or without the funding, he plans to forge ahead with the complex undertaking.
"In the event that we don't get any of the money through that program, we will find a way to get these projects done, guaranteed."
Mayor | Drew Dilkens
Per the Windsor Star, Ward 6 Councillor Jo-Anne Gignac said, 'It's a wonderful announcement for Riverside and East Riverside. In the last two floods, we had the most damage. It has been an issue for people who lost their insurance coverage, me included." City engineer Mark Winterton stated that the idea is to actually lower the underground water level or hydraulic grade line. "This is really a step forward in how the sewer system is designed. It's a systematic approach to a very complicated problem. It's a really large-scale approach."
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The Sewer Master Plan, of which the east-end project is part of, is still months from being finalized. This will include $20 million of previous announced initiatives. Some of these initiatives are as follows:
- Riverside Vista Project
- Bolstering several pump stations
- Two Kilometres of road reconstruction
- New sewers along Belleperche
"That's a massive undertaking. You have to do it in phases because people wouldn't be able to get to their homes."
Mayor | Drew Dilkens
In the last two years, Windsor was hit by two severe rainstorms with more than 220 millimetres of rain both times. There were all together more than 9,000 reports of flooding and resulted in $200 million plus in insurance issues. Unfortunately, only about 45 percent of the affected residents were covered by flood insurance. Many of the residents had to pay for their losses with their own money or loans and many business lost a lot of revenue due to the inaccessibility of getting to these businesses.
Mayor Dilkens' 7 point plan to fix the flooding problem in Windsor is as follows:
- Making downspout disconnections mandatory city-wide.
- Funding 100 percent of the cost of backflow valves and sump pumps for residents to guard against sewer backups in their basements. "It's the first line of the defense. It's the best line of defense for your homes," Dilkens said of the backflow valves, which would be funded through the city's Basement Flooding Protection Subsidy.
- Investigating adding sewage-ejection pumps to the Basement Flooding Protection Subsidy program.
- Completing the partly finished Riverside Drive Vista road and sewer project between St. Rose Avenue and Ford Boulevard, at a cost of $7 million, an area where homes were devastated by the August 29 flooding.
- Expedite the city's sewer master plan, a camera project mapping out the city's sewer systems (there are actually six systems underground), identifying problems and finding solutions. Without this plan, the city can't move forward with the big underground projects needed to ultimately solve the problem, according to Dilkens.
- Working with the Town of Tecumseh (whose sewage flows to Windsor's treatment plants) to immediately review development policies to ensure new subdivisions don't make the flooding threat worse.
- Urging the Ontario government to expand its Disaster Recovery Assistance Program to include homeowners who suffered significant flooding from sewer backup, and create a flood insurance plan to help the many Windsor residents who have been refused private flood insurance or offered insurance with inadequate coverage.
Some parts of his plan, such as boosting the backflow subsidy to 100 percent from the existing 80 percent, can happen within weeks and people need to get on board. Right now only seven percent of homes have taken advantage of this subsidy. The system was just not built to handle the massive amount of rain that Windsor incurred.
"We need to find a way and the government needs to help us find a way to get coverage for our residents."
Mayor | Drew Dilkens
Describing the challenges being made by the garbage collection crews, Dilkens said, "On a normal run, a truck can collect trash from 300 homes before it's full and must head to the transfer station. When they had to collect flood debris from the front of people's homes, trucks could only service 3 to 10 households and it became quite a lengthy process to collect the waste." Mayor Dilkens said, "I just want to assure everyone that we are doing absolutely everything we can."
