In April we held our public meeting dealing with the aftermath of our second round of basement flooding in 6 months. While I am willing to concede that the flooding that occurred in September 2004 was the result of a 1 in 100 years event, this certainly does not hold true for the repeat flooding in April. In September basements flooded in every neighbourhood across the city, in April, the flooding occurred only in a small number of cluster areas which in our ward, included City View, Woodroffe, Bel Air, Crestview and Ryan Farm. But this, we already knew.

At our community meeting, our residents agreed on a number of questions to submit to staff in an effort to get at both short and long-term solutions. At that meeting I indicated that I would call a second meeting within a matter of weeks to advise everybody of the solutions that would be emerging. Staff's answers are in. We will still have that second meeting, however I do not want to waist your time and the small community steering committee agrees that there would not be any benefit to calling the community out again right now. The reason for that is the information coming forward falls into 2 categories:

There are some immediate but interim solutions that we have made available to residents.While no single one of these will be a 100% guarantee against flooding, each one can significantly reduce the risk so all of them together provide better protection while we wait for a long-term solution.
A permanent solution will require significant money from the budget and considerable design time.

Neither one of the above would benefit from a public meeting at this time. We will definetly need community consensus on which elements we adopt to be the long-term permanent fix. As soon as we have these proposals and know the cost of each, we will meet with the community to determine how much we will need to win from Council.

The first interim solution: the neighbourhood sewers have now been inspected, videotaped and cleaned in all of the cluster areas.

The second: beginning immediately, the city's protective plumbing program is being expanded. The protective plumbing program includes the cost sharing on the installation of backflow valves. This enhanced version of the program boosts the city's subsidy from 50-80% of this installation costs and the total dollar amount has been boosted from $2,000 to $4,000. To participate in this program, please contact Brian Clement 580-2424 ext. 16207 , visit the City of Ottawa web site, www.ottawa.ca after June the 1st to download the information, or contact either of my offices, 580-2685 or 580-2478.

The third interim measure is something you can do on your own: make sure that your sump pumps are connected to your ditch as opposed to the sanitary sewer line or weeping tiles. If they are connected to the sanitary sewers, this increases the volume of liquids and can lead to an increased risk of flooding: Perhaps not in your basement, but certainly in your neighbours. How can you determine if you have a cross-connection risk? Find the pump's outlet. If it is connected to any pipe in the house (like a laundry pipe) it is likely cross-connected and you are probably increasing the risk of flooding. However, if the outflow goes to the ground well beyond the house, and you can see the flow leading to the ditch or culvert, there is likely no cross-connection issue. If you do have a cross-connection problem, please contact Michel Chevalier to determine the most effective way to fix it, 580-2424 ext. 22335

I would like to re-iterate that none of the interim solutions are a final fix, but can provide degrees of security to homeowners that the risk of an additional flood is being mitigated.

Each one of these steps reduces your risk by a significant percentage so by doing 1 or all of them you decrease your chances of flooding while we work toward the design of a permanent solution.

Expect to receive a letter from sewer staff outlining some of these measures shortly and stay tuned for my summer newsletter which will include important updates.

If you have any comments or questions on this or any other issue, please contact me at 580-2478 or email Rick.Chiarelli@ottawa.ca.