Floods, Sewers and Runoff Management

The story of the so-called 100-year floods that strike Glencairn periodically is well known by now by everyone living in Ottawa. The response to date has been almost entirely bureaucratic and political by city staff and council, respectively, which is regrettably predictable. It is also not unique to Ottawa; this type of response seems all too typical of city governments. While the blame game goes on, affected residents are entirely on their own, in many cases with a lack of sufficient insurance since the insurance companies know a bad risk when they see it, even when those in authority do not or refuse to admit what they already knew about the risk.

I was once caught in a similar situation, though one that was less critical. It was in Nepean, in the time before amalgamation. The Glencairn storyline is eerily familiar to me. Let me walk through what I learned from that process, that in the end worked out in my favour. First, a bit of background.

The past several decades have been a period of tremendous change in our cities. It is not only population growth and suburban expansion, but an increasing awareness of the environment and desirable living spaces. These factors often mixed poorly with respect to outcomes such as managing the flow of water. Everyone should of course know that water runs downhill, yet the continuing evolution of zoning, land use and environmental regulations by multiple layers of government often failed to take this into account. You can't win against water: it is a force that over the Earth's long history has leveled mountains, carved massive canyons and infiltrated every void in the ground below our feet. The best we can do (like in many martial arts) is redirect its strength to our benefit. This includes irrigation and sanitation. When we can't use it, we hide it: massive volumes of water that flowed over and through the prehistoric landscape still flows beneath our cities, mostly channeled in a manner that is hopefully benign. Urban inhabitants rarely notice the culverts, level spans and boxed-in streams that pepper the landscape. Out of sight, out of mind, it seems.

Now, back to my story. My neighbourhood suffered from the above difficulties. In particular, the low soil cover over bedrock produced an incentive over the years to raise grade levels, both to accommodate full basements and to meet provincial (Ministry of Environment) regulations for the septic systems we had. This resulted in more and more properties becoming higher than others. There is another provincial requirement, which is that every property owner is responsible for managing their own water, in particular by ensuring that water from their property, both runoff and effluent does not negatively impact neighbouring properties and waterways (note that I am horribly simplifying the legal requirements). Each city ensures that building permits are only issued when these provincial regulations are satisfied. That's the theory.

The reality can vary quite a lot. Not all property owners get building permits for work on their land, and even when they do, especially years back, cities were not overly strict in enforcing another government's regulations if the city's works themselves are not impacted. Regulations also went through a series of rapid changes, which could be difficult to track and enforce. If you've ever dealt with city staff, they can be negotiated with, within reasonable bounds of course; they see one of their primary jobs as helping you through the permitting process, especially when they're asked to do another government's enforcement work. For larger developments, less savoury factors enter into the equation since cities are increasingly hungry for revenue from development and permit fees as a substitute for politically-sensitive property tax hikes to fund operations.

None of us likes to take the blame for what happened before we came on the scene. When you move into a new job are you happy to get complaints about the poor performance of your predecessor? Politicians and bureaucrats feel the same, and can be far more defensive because past institutional failures can become very public. The blame can even occur when previous public and private works complied with all regulations at the time they were done, but do not comply with those currently in place; it can be very difficult to disentangle the weave of past works and changing regulations, and the more complex it gets, the less those affected want to be bothered -- they want a fix for problems, now, while the city wants to escape undue blame. Thus, we have conflict.

When I did work on my property, Nepean wanted me to solve all the water problems of surrounding properties that had been earlier approved to raise theirs and have their water run off onto mine. There was some (official) negotiation and we reached a compromise to everyone's satisfaction. Around the same time, the city improved the storm sewer system to manage the runoff problems in the neighbourhood due to all those piecemeal property changes that were approved over the decades. However, this was small potatoes compared to the effort that is required to fix the disaster that is Glencairn and to also deal with new development nearby in the Carp River basin.

We can expect the blame game to go on for a while in Glencairn. As more information comes to light, as it already has, both Council and staff will feel increasingly exposed to potential litigation since there is some evidence of negligence on their part. On a smaller scale, our neighbourhood went through the same thing with Nepean, where Council and staff tried to wash their hands of any responsibility. The individuals involved were not responsible, since they weren't there at the time those works were done, but the institution did have potential liability, even if it was only of the political variety. They acted, just as it is likely that Ottawa will act in the case of Glencairn. However, they may have to wait a few years, during which residents must keep up the pressure.