Whew!, we've had some rain. In the 69 years I've lived here I've never seen flooding like we just experienced.
We've had 3 storms with-in 2 weeks, the first each bringing 100mm of the wet stuff, then Sunday night another that brought 170 mm of rain in under 12 hours.
The Municipality seemed a little lax with ditching the past few years and that probably added to the issue. Most Municipalities contract a lot of work out these days, preferring the cost of the Contractor to the cost of having Employees......but our Taxes never go down. More Taxes, less Service.
To add to Sunday nights deluge, just as things were getting dicey for most home-owners ( flooding basements) - Hydro One had a 4 hour black-out over Vineland, Beamsville, Smithville and some surrounding areas - the ones being swamped the worst at that time.
Our boys and ourselves all have generators so out they came and we kept pumping all night. A LOT of my neighbors weren't so fortunate.
The North end of St Catharines all the way to Virgil has been hammered twice now as well. I have friends who are still trying to clean up after the first flooding - 3-4' of SEWAGE in their finished basements.....only to get flooded a second time in two weeks.
A number of Insurance Companies are refusing coverage. Some home-owners have no sump pumps, others have no check valves on sewer lines while still others like ourselves are being refused because they say we live on a flood plain. Technically, they are correct, the area we occupy is between the base of the Niagara Escarpment and the south shore of Lake Ontario. That area is an ancient lake bed - so they call it a flood plain and after what we saw driving around it is indeed a flood plain.
We survived with a little storm water in our basements, by yesterday afternoon between pumping and fans we're all dried out. Some neighbors didn't fair so well.
Our youngest son and his wife own/operate Good Manners Ice Cream on our frontage ( that was itself a Lake for a day and a half) so yesterday ( holiday Monday) to try and cheers folks up a little they posted on their website to " come and get a single scoop cone - FOR FREE - and leave a donation if you feel up to it. They went through over 20 gallons of ice cream, donating the ice cream and employee wages.
It looks like they gathered around $1200.00 to go toward helping folks in the area with their struggles.
I'm damn proud of them and the people who donated.
July in Ottawa was the largest rain fall ever. Dating back to the 1890's. This has nothing to do with sewers, ditches or anything else. Design work is based on some form of information. This is historical. As for insurance not paying, people should read their policies. Most of the time it's clearly stated, sewer back ups are not covered
July in Ottawa was the largest rain fall ever. Dating back to the 1890's. This has nothing to do with sewers, ditches or anything else. Design work is based on some form of information. This is historical. As for insurance not paying, people should read their policies. Most of the time it's clearly stated, sewer back ups are not covered
Ive noticed that now 2025- 2026 when they,re working on roads . They are digging out old culverts and replacing them with larger dia ones . Local road work done near our place was replacing a section of road from gravel to tar and stone and all the old 2-3 ft dia culverts were took out and replaced with 5-6 ft dia culverts . A three foot culvert near us was pulled out and replaced with two 6 footers
We are on city sewers and our footing drains into sewer , both the footing line and sewer line have back up valves .
My Mom always said dont buy a house on low ground near water , your never gonna know when it will flood . Dont buy a house near train tracks or unused tracks cause you never know if they are going to start using them again or derailments . Never buy a house on side of a hill or slope cause of run off . Heavy snow and spring melt or heavy rains .
So I bought a house on a slope , but run off goes well away from house . Theres train tracks about 1/8 th mile away but well treed and well graded , above track line . Then water is 1/4 mile away , River valley is about 1/4 mile wide and level would have to rise 100 feet to affect us .
But yeah read your ins policies word for word
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I,m as cool as Milner , but axeually a bit more like Beckwith
" A three foot culvert near us was pulled out and replaced with two 6 footers ".....
My Dad was a Public Works Supervisor for 20+ years and built roads for 20 years before that. He always advocated for " bigger" rather than " good enough" and usually would get flak from his boss or Council.....but he kept doing it anyway. A couple times it almost cost him his employment.
The reason they're replacing all those culverts is because of what is called " the 100 year flood". Dad talked about it often, usually when someone wanted a driveway culvert installed, or weeping tiles & under-drains put in. He would explain that every 100 years ( or more often) there would be a flood and that Infrastructure should be gauged to accommodate such a flood.
Unfortunately, a lot of Municipalities and Townships would use the bare minimum to try to stay on budget, but when " the storm" hit, it would come back to bite them in the ass.
And Marten - proper ditching / drainage as opposed to a debris filled swale goes a long way when the rains come.
