Coronation Park residents are fed up.
That was the overall feeling during a community meeting Wednesday night to discuss the devastating flooding experienced during storms two weeks ago.
It was standing room only inside the Community of Christ Church, and about another 100 residents waited outside to sign a petition.
(Flood disaster meeting at Community of Christ Church on Wednesday, Aug 17, 2022. Blackburn Media photo by Stephanie Chaves.)
Mike Wallington was one of about 300 residents who attended the meeting.
"This whole area has been a problem since the beginning, but it's only getting worse," said Wallington. "With climate change of course, these rain storms and torrential downpours are going to get worse, so the problem is going to get worse. We have to adapt, we have to do something. We need help."
Wallington said due to the number of floods he has suffered, he can no longer get insurance, a concern many residents expressed.
Coronation Park resident Barb Ducharme said the recent storms flooded her basement for the fourth time since 1996.
"My basement is completely finished and they had to cut out the drywall again, in my crawl space even," said Ducharme. "I'm pretty upset, I'm really upset, everything is a mess. I live on a cul-de-sac and three of the four people on the cul-de-sac had water, one of whom is around 90-years-old, she's just devastated. I want them to fix it, so this isn't a mess anymore."
City councillor Brian White, who was part of the city's delegation at the 2022 Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in Ottawa this week, told the standing room only crowd that he raised the issue during a sit down with the Minister of Infrastructure Kinga Surma.
"Their response was that this is happening in her own neighbourhood as well, and that this is a really large problem across the province of Ontario," said White. "Unfortunately, that's not the response I wanted to hear at the moment, but I ensured that I was able to press upon her that this is an increasing urgency here in Sarnia because of our aging infrastructure, and because of the effects of climate change."
He said the city is hoping for answers very soon
"The good news right now is that, between all of the levels of government, we have been pushing very, very hard to make this a priority," he said. "So we know that we are getting some action from the federal government right now, we know that the province has also sent people down already to inspect the true source of the problem."
Last week, during an emergency meeting, city council approved the development of an immediate action plan, that includes the development of a long term infrastructure master plan.
The organizer of the community meeting, Germain Street resident David Wood, said many of the residents were pressing for another information session, which he hopes to arrange in the near future.
Affected homeowners were also told to watch for updates on the situation on the We the flooded-Sarnia Facebook page.
