By Pepper Parr
July 19th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
More than 680 homes were damaged by flooding earlier this week.
Financial support will be available to these home owners
Thirteen homes along Cavendish were badly damaged. They are getting cheques from the Hwy ETR Corporation in the amount of $2000.
The City has a plan that will give $1000 to those home owners who qualify. The City CAO made it clear that the criteria to get the will be simple.
The Region has a grant of $1000 per home that was damaged; they too will have a low bar to qualify.
City Council moved quickly to get funds to people.City staff did a remarkable job scrambling to meet a situation that called for everyone to be available.
The word “significant” is interesting given that the “average Canadian” basement costs $43,000 to replace after a flood according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. I suspect this figure is much higher in Burlington.
I wonder what financial compensation the upper tier governments will chip in given that the Federal government, through its immigration policy and the Ontario government through its requirement for the municipalities to densify our Citiies through increased development are major contributors to this problem. As reported earlier this week in the Toronto press, municipalities reap 10% of tax dollars and are required to manage 60% of the infrastructure. Perhaps our MPs and MPPs should be stepping up.
The Province, through the OLT continues to overrule the City in its development decisions.
Was this degree of water incursion and the resulting damage preventable and did Hwy ETR Corp, COB and/or Halton drop the ball? Will accepting the funding prevent owners from seeing legal reocourse?