Toronto flooding spurs calls for infrastructure overhaul and improved emergency response – Beach Metro Community News

By AMARACHI AMADIKE

After Toronto was hit by another costly flood last Tuesday, Mayor Olivia Chow filed a notice of motion which aims to address damages and prevention strategies at the upcoming council meeting on Thursday, July 25.

Last week’s flooding stranded many vehicles on the Don Valley Parkway (DVP), prompting criticism over the lack of advance warnings and road closures for known flood-prone areas.

The mayor’s motion directs city staff to review Toronto’s current stormwater mitigation programs and flood prevention strategies to inform residents.

“I’m glad to see a review is being undertaken to understand why the DVP was not shut down sooner, given the known history of the highway flooding and the need to rescue more than a dozen people after they were stranded,” said Beaches-East York Councillor Brad Bradford.

In just a few hours, parts of Toronto received about 100 millimetres of rain, overwhelming the outdated infrastructure and flooding many basements and streets.

The damage resembled the 2013 flood, during which Toronto saw 126 millimetres of rain in just 90 minutes. Last week’s storm marks only the second such heavy downpour in 11 years.

“It’s a reminder of how much work remains to make our city’s infrastructure more resilient, and also the importance of ensuring appropriate emergency management by Toronto’s leadership,” said Bradford.

According to Bradford’s office, several Beaches-East York residents reported flooded basements, but city staff have not noted any other major impacts on city infrastructure.

Beaches-East York MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon, a vocal critic of the Ford government’s flood mitigation strategies, told Beach Metro Community News she received numerous reports of basement flooding among her constituents.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” said McMahon. “I’m hearing about a $1 billion price tag on this. We know what happened in B.C. was $9 billion and Alberta had $5 billion cleanup costs. So we can’t continue to do this.”

Last March, McMahon’s Bill 56 (Fewer Floods, Safer Ontario Act) was defeated in its second reading by Progressive Conservative MPPs at Queen’s Park. The bill proposed a Flooding Awareness Week in the fourth week of March each year and recommended that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing publish educational information about floods on the government’s official website.

“This government is just not concerned about proactive and preventative measures,” said McMahon.

McMahon says Ontario’s climate policies have gone “backwards” due to the government’s focus on accelerating housing development. She criticized the Ford administration’s More Homes Built Faster Act 2022 (Bill 23), which she argued has negatively impacted Ontario’s wetlands, a crucial aspect of flood prevention.

McMahon told Beach Metro Community News that forward-thinking strategies are needed to address the current situation in Ontario. One such strategy involves providing residents with flood maps to identify if their homes are at risk of stormwater flooding.

“We also have to be thinking of things like de-pavement projects,” said McMahon. “Where you see such hard surfaces like parking lots, we can see if we can green them up and put in some trees and pollinated gardens. Just adding a lot more green space to help absorb what’s coming down.”

A more direct approach being taken by the City of Toronto is the $3 billion Coxwell Bypass, a 22-kilometre tunnel designed to capture water during heavy storms and direct it to a treatment plant before discharging it into Lake Ontario. Initially expected to be completed this year, only 30 per cent of the tunnel has been constructed so far.

With extreme weather conditions becoming more frequent in the city, including today’s storm that resulted in the flooding of one lane of the DVP this afternoon, the July 25 council meeting is expected to focus heavily on the city’s overworked stormwater system and strategies to expedite critical infrastructure like the Coxwell Bypass — all this against the backdrop of a projected $26 billion budget shortfall over the next 10 years for aging infrastructure.