By Pepper Parr
January 10, 2016
BURLINGTON,ON
When it rains, many of the people in the east end of the city – especially if they live in the Tuck Creek – Regal Road part of town look up to the sky and at the level of water in the creek if they live close to one.
Tuck Creek has not gone over its banks – but we didn’t get that much rain – unsettling to the people who live along that creek.
It will be a decade before they trust the banks of those creeks and whatever the city and the Region or the Conservation Authority have put in place to manage exceptionally high rain.
It was a very small proportion of Burlington’s population that suffered from the rain that fell for a solid day and dumped 191 MM of rain in a single day.
Tuck Creek – fast running water – and not all that much rain.
The provincial government did come through with funding and the community raised just shy of $1 million in a 100 day time frame to help with the devastation 272 family underwent.
Recovering from that flood was a magnificent act on the part of the citizens and the commercial community.
The pictures of Tuck Creek that accompany this article were taken by Carol Gottlob who gets passionate about the state of the creeks – especially Tuck creek.
The water levels are high – and there wasn’t that much rain. Has Tuck Creek been upgraded, repaired, fixed – whatever it needs to prevent the flooding we experienced in 2014?
A full day of rain made this happen – have the fixes that were needed been put in place to prevent this kind of flooding?
The flood experience changed many lives forever – the financial support helped – but those properties are not worth what they used to be.
Background: A reader asked if we would provide a link to a more detailed report on the flood and how it happened.
1.94 mm or rain in a day? Is that a misprint? That’s a tiny amount of rainfall.
Editor apologies:
It was 191 mm – our error – thank you for catching it.
Someone needs to look at what developments and redevelopments in the watershed, and particularly upstream of the flooding problem areas, have occurred that involved more urbanization, and pavement of the landscape, that decreases the permeability, and increases the runoff fraction that eventually goes to the creek.
What has developed and changed in the last 10 or 20 years? Or whatever time frame is appropriate.
Pepper, you did a story on the technical, and consultant report the city did on the 2014 flood, sometime back, and highlighted its importance, but seeming neglect. This might be relevant to look at too.
Here is the link Muir refers to – it has been added to the original article.
https://www.burlingtongazette.ca/?p=40959
Do you have a link to the report or an e-copy?