By Pepper Parr
November 4th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Matt Smith spoke to Council about the storm event of July 15, 2024 and the manner in which the city responded.
It was not a pretty picture.
Matt Smith: We called 311 and 911; we called all the ones.
“I am here today said Smith, as “One person representing hundreds that are looking forward to change. I’m a resident of Burlington; have lived my whole life. I want to talk about trust.
“Angelo Bentivegna told me last week that “we need to trust that our city staff, our city management team and our elected officials, have the best interest of the community at heart and are holding themselves accountable for their actions regarding our city’s preventable water incident from July 2024.
“Trust, to me, is a big word, the definition of trust – firm belief and reliability, truth ability or strength of someone or something, and that’s where I’d like to start today during my 10 minutes with all of you.
“The streets in Headon Forest flooded. We called 311 and 911; we called all the ones. The only city workers that came were ones with road signs that read “water over road”. The city was aware our streets were flooding. The city workers had to drive by car submerged in water; they saw rapid floods of water coming from the church entrance at St Paul’s to place the water over road signs.
“Residents tried to flag down other city workers, but they said they were dispatched to other areas. Frantic and overwhelmed, we were left to fend for ourselves while the culvert close by was blocked with debris, causing the creek to back up over its top banks, flooding the neighborhood streets.
“It was the residents of Headon Forest that made their way through the dangerous, chest deep water to the culvert and St Paul’s Church, and spent hours on removing the debris with shovels and pipes and their bare hands to try and save our community from further disaster.
“On day two of the flooding, July 16, when the streets of Headon Forest were forced to again remove debris from the culvert at St Paul’s Church
“We again spent hours trying to flag down city workers. Twenty hours after the original, preventive, 20 hours after hydro and the phone boxes submerged underwater: for 20 hours the city left us to rely on protecting our homes and well being ourselves.
The city didn’t show up to assist in removing the rest of the debris and the blockage once we were already three quarters complete.
We stood in water up to our chests trying to remove the debris that was preventing the water to flow through the culvert. Photo credit BrianMirrless.
“The damage was repeated on day two; it re impacted our properties, our personal belongings, and compounded the damage from the day before. Reliability.
“We need to rely on the city, trust that they maintain our water systems. We were left on our own. As a neighborhood, a community, we had to put ourselves, our well being, at risk to enter hazardous and dangerous water conditions to defend our homes from the preventable water incident.”
Trust was a word Smith used frequently – hammering home the concerns his neighbours had as he explained that it was one month later, August 13, 2024 when we met Rico Scalera, the Director of Roads, Parks and Forestry department who has been with the city since November 30, 2020
Leaning forward as he spoke Matt Smith waved the document with all the rules and procedures in place to prevent flooding.
“During this meeting, some of the truth came out. Many local residents along with our ward counselor Heard Rico say things that really stood out regarding the truth of the preventable water incident on July 15 and 16th. He said the culvert was missed on the maintenance schedule. He said the city is currently using a paper work order system, and sometimes documentations get lost.
He also commented on the reliability of the contractors completing the jobs to the city standards and lack of auditing process of work: – the truth.
Let us not forget, we had an incident in Burlington in 2014 in Headon Forest and across Burlington, where the major impacts were created during the meeting, we chatted relating to the document that I have here,
Smith would use the word Truth and then wave a copy of the Storm Water Design Guideline the city put out.
The full story on the flooding that ran into the 407 has yet to be told.
“The document outlines storm water management, drainage policies, methodology, design, guidelines and standards. The city’s truth on storm water management and prevention policy. You might hear comments in the news setting the 407 fault, but any new development must go through the city’s storm water management guideline.
“So the truth must have been missed during the guidelines provided by the city. The city states that any development prior to 1977 when the storm water designs were adopted to incorporate overland routes into urban designs, are at risk or urban area flooding, where roads and properties have isolated low points, the truth, Headon Forest has these low points, they also have overflow pipes for these conditions of major system roadways.
“The truth is that they haven’t been maintained in 20 plus years and were plugged, which resulted in the compounding effect from the lack of maintenance from the culvert, which in turn devastated some residents in Headon Forest.
“The truth is sometimes a tough thing, but for our great city to ensure the safety and reliability of our storm water systems, we need to hear the truth to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself again. Again – Trust, a firm belief and reliability truth, ability or strength of someone or something.
“Ability another major factor when it comes to trust laying that foundation, the ability to act in this meeting. A document on page two, lays out the areas of improvement that can be implemented immediately to assist in the reducing any future risk of flooding during these events, more frequent maintenance, enhanced on call, storm water drainage areas create city wide storm water master plan, storm sewer inlet. Increased, proactive storm infrastructure maintenance.
“All sounds amazing. But these all have been laid out before and the 2020 storm water design guideline, which can be found on the city’s website.
Matt Smith: “Inside the guideline, you will see that the storm water management design guidelines are intended to be used by practitioners to design storm drainage infrastructure within the city of Burlington.
“So let’s recap a few things that apply directly to the Headon Forest preventable water incident from the Engineering Service Report. While referencing the 2020 design guideline, inside the guideline, you will see that the storm water management design guidelines are intended to be used by practitioners to design storm drainage infrastructure within the city of Burlington. We have the MESP, the Master Environmental Servicing Plan from 2020 in support of secondary plans or territory plans. We have a report already, the FSNR Functional Service Report from 2020. Functional servicing reports provide detailed specifics to functional serviceability for the proposed development related to water, wastewater and storm water network to ensure that it can function to municipality, regional and provincial criteria. To me, it sounds like we have this plan, like the storm water management design guideline from 2020. Has the ability to reduce, prevent these types of preventable incidents.
“The inlet structure was blocked with debris, causing the creek to back up and over top its banks, flooding the roads and private properties. On page five, the storm water management design guideline for 2020 lays out guidelines and regulatories to ensure the right design is applied based on the environmental and agricultural impact ability. Again, if we couldn’t follow the 2020 how are we going to follow the 2024 again, trust the strength of something or someone.
Smith said the backhoe sat on the site for six days. Photo credit Brian Mirrlees
“Sometimes we don’t need to throw money at the problem, but hold ourselves accountable and utilize resources at our fingertips.
“The city has plans for more red light cameras all over the city, so the technology is there to monitor our major storm systems, even water level in key creeks, watershed locations. Strength in action. It’s been 111 days since the preventable water incident.
“I’m not sure about all of you, but thank goodness we haven’t gotten a lot of rain since now.
“In closing Smith asked: “I think we need to ask ourselves, are we doing enough? Is our city taking action? Are we acting quick enough? Are we hoping that we won’t get any more rain again?
“Trust, a firm belief in reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something, fundamental of trust is earned through action, communication and accountability.
“Committee, if it was your house was impacted by this preventable water incident, a neighbor you know, a friend or family, would you trust a move forward plan and the people in charge trust, trust the people action
“We are told to trust the process, trust the city. I hope my discussion today, you can see why we might hesitate as taxpaying community members would like to see accountability and action first.”
Smith’s delegation was devastating.
We will return to you tomorrow with how Council members and staff responded.
This culvert was built in 1989/1990 as part of the subdivisions in the area.
In 2021 the grating was added at the elected officials insistence . Staff were well aware that the inlet grating would fail, cause overland flooding and would also
require regular maintenance. Staff did not support the construction of this grating.
Now.. 3 Years later it failed.
Now.. we are leveling the upstream vegetation.
I strongly recommend that the inlet grating be removed and the creek clearing be further asessed.
ps.. does the city have a permit to work in the creek bottom. we have a permit
At its core the job of council starts and ends with taking care and action on things we the taxpayers cannot do nor should do ourselves. The range and arc starts with fixing potholes and then onward up to and including preventing let alone mitigating situations such as those shared during this delegation. Lady luck was on COB’s side as no one lost their life as they were swept away. High time COB applied Net-zero to such reoccurrences, it has happened twice so far and it will happen again if nothing substantive happens.
This is just one of the the flood storie we knew were out there that we have been trying to get out and failed. Thank you Matt Smith, now let us all do our part and insist on accountability. And yes Graham you are right Excellent rebuke to all the BS we have had to listen to, knowing it was just that.
I deeply commend Matt Smith for his delegation to Council and its failure to follow the plan in place to ensure that a repeat of the 2014 flooding would not happen again. But it did in July 2024.
In our neighbourhood park named Peart Park, there exist two grilled drains, one above the ground level near the edge of the park and the hydro right of way and the other nearby low in the flood creek’s end to take the lowest water under the right of way. I recalled seeing this low grill many years ago in walks through the wooded pathway but after this year’s flooding of many neighbour’s back yards and basements backing onto the park on Augustine Drive I looked for the grill but couldn’t find it.
I emailed Mr. Scalera and he quickly confirmed that I was correct that the grill was there but that it was buried under debris and soil so much that it couldn’t been seen. He sent out a crew to dig it out. I was glad for that, but sadly it was too late for my Augustine neighbours. I’m still waiting for a crew to clear all of the debris in the creek flood path (there is a lot) to the grill. I assume it is unfortunately one of the low priority flood pathways on “the List”.
Getting these flood pathways and grills cleaned out in all of Burlington is supposedly in the most recent plan, but it is not just the cleanout but the continued maintenance of clean flood paths that is critical going forward.
I recently sent in one request to Lori Jivan in Budgeting that I request the Civic Square redo be reduced to what was agreed to by Council in 2018 but rejected by the new Council in 2019. That 2018 agreement was mainly to fix the dangerous brick floor of the square with a safe and even surface for all users and keep the lovely fountain as it is. No changes to the entrance ways to City Hall, but add some more shaded spots and benches to the square. It would save a few millions in cost that could go to flood mitigation that is an absolute necessity.
I have no idea whether it will get any notice in the end budget for 2025, but it is essentially a test in my mind of our Council’s ethics and duty of care whether flood mitigation is more important than a new, pretty face for Civic Square. I await my test results.
Excellent delegation! Along with repeating the word ‘truth’ I was glad to see the word ‘accountable’ as accountability by this Council and City staff is sadly lacking
Thank you Matt Smith for representing our community, we all feel the same!
Excellent rebuke to all the BS people like Angelo try to placate tax payers with every day.
Wow. Well done sir. Well done.