City crews fixing sewers on Kalmar Avenue after 2012 flooding
More than 100 streets in Birch Cliff, Cliffside and Cliffcrest have been targeted for $300 million in recommended infrastructure upgrades by the City of Toronto to reduce the risk of flooding through sewer overflows.
The proposed sewer upgrades were revealed in a flyer delivered to homes throughout southwest Scarborough informing residents of a virtual public consultation meeting on Thurs. Nov. 26 as part of an updated Environmental Assessment study.
“The recommended solutions are designed to reduce the risk of basement flooding and to reduce combined sewer overflows to Lake Ontario,” according to Eleanor McAteer, Director, Water Infrastructure Management. “The recommended solutions exceed current Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks guidelines, which limit allowable overflows to no more than two overflows per year under average rainfall conditions.”
Flooded Birch Cliff basement, 2012
Response to 2012 basement flooding
The consultation meeting comes more than eight years after approximately 400 homes in southwest Scarborough were flooded with raw sewage, stormwater, or both, during a torrential storm that dropped 90 millimetres of rain during a two-hour period on July 15, 2012. More homes were flooded less than a month later, on Aug.10.
Homeowners reported raw sewage and stormwater spewing out of basement toilets, sinks and showers, leaving houses flooded with wastewater as deep as two feet.
Birch Cliff resident Mike McCann is pleased with the planned infrastructure update.
McCann had $24,000 in damage to his basement after it flooded with 18 inches of sewage and water. His family had to remove debris, disinfect, and replace drywall, carpet, and major appliances
“I think it’s really overdue because we’ve been having this issue with the heavy rains every year,” McCann said. “It gets quite frustrating. Every time you see a major downpour you wonder whether you’re going to have your basement flooded out. And this is really time for us to do it. The neighborhood is changing as well. We’re getting a lot more condo developments in so that you’ll ever having we need the updated systems to handle both the rain runoff and the sewage.”
Is your street on the list?
Recommended sewer improvements
In a statement, McAteer said storm sewer upgrades are being planned for 89 streets in what’s known as Area 33, with boundaries from Lake Ontario to the south and the CNR rail line to the north, east of Victoria Park Avenue to past Brimley Road. You can read the full list of streets here.
The storm sewers will be modified to increase capacity, a process that most often occurs through surface excavation but can also involve tunnelling.
Furthermore, six kilometres of new storm sewers will be constructed to direct water away from the combined sewers.
Another 34 streets will receive upgrades to their combined sewers. A combined sewer is a pipe that collects both rainwater and sanitary sewage during a rainstorm and they only exist in older parts of the city. Newer areas of the city collect sewage and rainwater in separated sewers.
Combined sewers will be repaired/replaced through surface excavation and tunnelling.
In addition, several sewer system interconnections between storm and combined sewers will be eliminated.
The plans also include the installation of a combined sewage storage tank at the south end of Warden Avenue to store excessive storm and combined sewage during heavy rainstorms.
Crawford: “Excellent news”
Ward 20 City CouncillorGary Crawford said this is all “excellent news” for southwest Scarborough.
“The city has now designated those areas. We now know the areas that need to be approved. And we now have the plan to do the upgrades. We’ll have to look at the timeline of what that looks like.” Crawford said.
After the flood in 2012, Crawford successfully spearheaded an effort to have Ward 20 designated a priority area with regard to the Basement Flooding Protection Program.
As a result, McAteer said work in southwest Scarborough is substantively advanced compared to other parts of the city that were added to the program after a major storm in 2013.
“For our neighborhood to actually get on that list, I think was really important for us,” McCann said. We are part of Toronto and we want to make sure that we are getting our fair share of infrastructure upgrades. We’ve been waiting a long time.”
It’s not clear when the work will actually take place. The Environmental Assessment process generally takes a few years and should be completed in 2021.
The next step would be preliminary design where the recommended solutions are evaluated and further refined. McAteer said this phase could begin in 2022.
Once the EA is complete the project goes on a five-year project list that is presented annually to City Council. The projects are then prioritized to protect the greatest number of properties as soon as possible.
The virtual Public Consultation Drop-in event is being held from 6:00 to 7:30 pm on Thurs. Nov. 26. The city will present the recommended solutions for public comment.
If you plan to attend, you need to register with Mae Lee, Public Consultation Unit: mae.lee@toronto.ca or 416 392 8210.
I wish they would issue a map with all the side streets named… it’s very frustrating trying to see if my house is going to be excavated; I’m on Crescentwood, between Warden and Kildonan, and the cross streets are not labelled. I wrote to these guys asking, and got no reply. I know this work has to be done, I’m not going to fight, but I’m old and set in my ways and I’d like to have warning.
I had the same opinion about the map so I asked the city for a list of all affected streets and linked to it in the story. Crescentwood is getting a storm sewer upgrade but it’s not on the list for a combined sewer upgrade. That could be because there are no combined sewers in your part of the neighbourhood.
So the city is now conducting an environmental assessment, because the last one, conducted 10 years ago, ran out, and not one lick of work has been done for a problem originally identified in 2003. So not one contract has been tendered, and lets be clear the city is broke. So it should be abundantly obvious that the existing infrastructure is inadequate to deal with the existing community. Why are we issuing one single building permit if we cannot cope with what we have? That is not planning, it is lunacy.
In 2012 this area was designated a “priority”. 8 years later we are now redoing the environmental assessment. Some priority. Wow, I can hardly wait till the work is done. Are we targeting this century?