By Galen Simmons
Though there was some minor street flooding following last week’s deluge of rain, town staff feel St. Marys as a whole withstood the precipitous onslaught relatively well.
Heavy rain moved across the Upper Thames River watershed in several waves July 15 and 16, ending at approximately midnight July 17. By 2 p.m. July 17, the Upper Thames River basin had received 75-170 millimetres of rain over the past week, leaving the ground saturated and not able to absorb runoff, the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) said in a press release.
“Pretty good,” St. Marys director of public works Jed Kelly said when asked how the town fared during and after the most-recent rainfall events. “We found a couple little pinch points in the stormwater system and we found some maintenance issues we have to address, we found a couple legacy things we’d never seen that’s going to require some attention. There’s obviously all sorts of residents calling about grading issues and things like that, but that’s private property stuff.”
“We’ve definitely heard of people with flooded basements, for sure, kind of anecdotally,” added infrastructure services manager Jeff Wolfe. “We haven’t been to any properties to go over it with people, but overall, we fared pretty good.”
While low-lying areas around the Thames River and its tributaries in St. Marys did see high water and some flooding, and warnings for residents to stay clear of rivers and streams were issued by UTRCA, Kelly and Wolfe said public-works staff ensured storm-sewer inlets across town were kept clear of leaves, branches and other debris. Combined with regular preventative maintenance of stormwater facilities, catch basins and drains, they said the stormwater system worked as expected.
The town did see some issues with drainage where the asphalt on Charles Street had been removed and the road is set to be repaved.
“We got a little bit lucky that our main reconstruction project for the year, Wellington Street, hasn’t gotten started yet,” Wolfe said. “Usually when we have a reconstruction project and we get big rains like that, it becomes a problem just for access because everything is opened up and it’s kind of a little bit of a warzone. But this year, fortunately we’re not starting until the first week of August, so we didn’t have to worry about that.”
Since the ground was already saturated by previous heavy rain events, runoff from agricultural lands on the outskirts of town resulted in an influx of corn stalks and other debris being carried into town, plugging sewer grates and causing a few inches of flooding on the road surfaces of Queen Street East and James Street South.
“Both Queen and James had water ponding up on the roads during the storm,” Kelly said. “Probably no more than three or four inches (of water), I’d guess.”
While the town as a whole may have fared well during last week’s rainfall, the St. Marys Golf and Country Club – which sits in a low-lying area of town prone to flooding – was forced to close for at least the remainder of the week as eight of the course’s 18 holes were flooded.
“It’s pretty bad,” said golf course general manager Matt Staffen. “It’s the worst I’ve seen it since the year 2000 – so 24 years. We just got hammered with a significant amount of rainfall for the past seven days, but then (it was) compounded on top of that big, seven-inch rain at the end of June. We’re probably at above 12 inches (of rainfall) over the last few weeks, and that’s just devastating for us.
“When you add in the dam at the Wildwood Reservoir; they opened that up Tuesday night. They contacted us, and I’m going to give them credit where credit’s due. They’ve been doing a great job over the last couple years to avoid this because we’ve had a lot of rain over the last 13 months or so, so we’ve been fortunate they’ve been managing it very well. But this quantity and the compounded amount was just too much to handle.”
Staffen said he hoped the conservation authority would be ready to close the dam by Friday morning, at which time he and his staff would start working to drain the flooded fairways and do what they can to rehabilitate the golf course’s grass surfaces. He was hopeful the course would be able to reopen to golfers early this week.
Kelly and Wolfe said this recent rainfall should serve as a reminder to property owners to take the time now and shore up their homes and buildings for the next major rainfall.
“We don’t see heavy rains like that very often so we sometimes forget that, as homeowners, we shouldn’t have our basements directly connected to the storm sewer,” Wolfe said. “We do not permit direct, gravity connections to the storm sewer, so most houses are connected with a weeper around the footing.
“Storm sewers are meant to promote full, so in that case you could potentially be at risk if your house is directly connected to a storm sewer, so we do recommend sump pumps – either pump to grade or pump to storm sewer with an overflow (valve). … And lot grading of your yards … needs to be maintained. Your grading that was established when your house was built; ground moves through thaw-freeze cycles, so having an awareness of the grading of your lot (is important) to make sure you’re not sending water towards your house. … You should probably check your sump pumps, too, during big events like that to make sure it’s working properly.”
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