Comment 28647

By jason (registered) | Posted February 12, 2009 at 20:50:05

The Truth...yes, you are correct in general with that assessment of how the system works, but I should clarify one thing - suburban sprawl has been happening on the south Mountain, Upper Stoney Creek, Meadowlands etc.... those are the areas that (as the city's own public works department states) "use gravity to their advantage" by having their stormwater run down the escarpment into the lower city network. Suburbs such as Dundas, Waterdown, Flamborough aren't part of this system as far as I know. Sprawl is sprawl whether it happens at Upper Gage and Rymal or Golf Links and (name a cross-street, I don't know any).

Public works recently came before council and recommended they halt all new development in the periphery of this system. You'll recall a blog on RTH a couple of years ago about a new overflow tank being built in the west end due to all the runoff coming down the escarpment from the west mountain.

If your assessment that downtown residential units are as much to blame as new suburban ones, then why have these flooding problems escalated so much in the past 5-10 years?? This should have started 40, 50, 60 years ago.

We had infrastructure in place to handle a certain amount of growth and we've now allowed more sprawling growth than our infrastructure can handle. That's why public works is calling for an immediate halt to new building. Are they misinformed too??

Bob Bratina - you are so bang on. Hamilton IS a great city with the bones in place to be a spectacular city. We could be a mini-Montreal. Leadership is always the issue in life, and sadly our city shows the scars of having virtually none for too many decades. A wise person once said "nobody visits Paris to check out the nice roads and sewers".

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