Flooding Responsibility

I feel empathy for the residents flooded in recent heavy rains. I live in a neighborhood area that has suffered sewer backups/flooding in the past (although not this year that I know of...). I dread the thought of having to tear up my basement etc.

But a common thread throughout the media reporting on the flood really bothers me. "The City should ... the City must ... it's the city's fault..." Why are we so quick to blame the City and want taxpayers to cover the cost of our personal losses?

All over the City, in surburban or urban areas, I see a larger percentage of the lots being paved over or built over every year. Cars, it seems, can no longer be parked on gravel. Houses get bigger and bigger, with roofs that channel water to the curb. Grass gets torn out to be replaced with easier maintenance pavement.

Rather than building huge new sewers to carry off the rainfall, maybe we should be looking at better building, retrofitting drainage patterns, and a new attitude.

Better building means grading neighborhoods to retain water rather than run it off. We are part way there with playing fields and parks being given double use, for sports and for water storage. The soccer fields at my neighborhood park (Plouffe Park, behind the Plant Rec Centre on Preston Street) were just lowered 3 feet and regraded to accept any storm surge that comes down Preston (the park is at the lowest point in the neighborhood. It is the lowest point because its natural drainage to the west was blocked off by developments raising the ground level and the City raising the road). I notice the park in Sandy Hill near Ottawa U has also just been rebuilt as a storm basin.

We need more of these storm ponds. And they need not be just in parks, they can be along hydro rights of way or the OTrain. We are at the tail end of a generation of city planners and residents who want all water to drain away fast. We dont like puddles or ponds or creeks. As a youth, I used to live in a west end neighborhood when it was new. Residents paid extra for creekside lots, then promptly filled in the shoreline to make it hard and level for more grass lawns. It no longer looks like a creek or functions like one, it is a sad three sided culvert that is open at the top. Pinecrest creek was recently "improved" with stone sides, when it needs to be widened in places to cope with the surge. Of course, the creek itself disappears into a sewer near Woodroofe HS. (Should I start a facebook site to identify our lost creeks and streams and get them uncovered?).

And this brings me to homeowner responsibility. Its OK to let there be a puddle on the lawn for a day or two after a heavy rain. Really. And for neighborhoods like McKeller Park which when built commonly had their roof gutters connected directly to the sewers, well those environmental practices are now seen as so stupid. Lets take it to the next step. I suggest that the appropriate standard is that NO property should be permitted to rapidly drain off rain water. If it rains on your lot, hold the water. Let it percolate into the soil slowly, or run off gently into surface creeks. This will mean more water barrels or cisterns. It will mean some soggy lawns. Driveways and parking spaces should be permeable pavements, not impermeable ones.

And the City should do its bit too. Stop paving roads with rapid drainage to the catchbasins. Make the basins 5 feet deeper, so the first rainwater stays in the basin and then soaks into the groundwater. Require sidewalks that are permeable concrete (as fast as it rains on the sidewalk it goes straight through into the ground). Require large parking lots at industries, apartment buildings, and shopping malls to have permeable zones where rainwater will reenter the groundwater rather than run directly to a storm sewer. Require all new construction to catch and release the rainfall slowly. Its not all that difficult for most areas of the city.

The natural response of people with flooded basements will be to aggravate the problem by regrading their lots to drain away the water faster, to direct the downspouts directly to the street, when I think the better response is figure out how to keep the rainfall in the neighborhood. It will require some imagination and collective action.

These measures are not an instant solution. Nor is building more larger sewers to shove the water downstream to the next neighborhood. Which way to we want to go: more pavement, more fast drainage into bigger sewers; or slowing down the runoff so it isn't a problem in the first place?

Plouffe Park sodded

Last Wednesday, May 13 about 1/3 of the park was sodded. There was no further action until Tuesday, May 19 when the remainder of the park was sodded. Fences have been constructed to try to keep people and animals off the fields. Limited activities (not including soccer) will be permitted during the summer when the Plant Pool Rec.Assoc (PPRA) holds summer camps.

The big green swatch in the middle of the ward is really welcome given all the construction and dirt elsewhere. This neighborhood has the least amount of City greenspace of any ward in the City of Ottawa.

Plouffe Park landscaping

note the two receivers mounted on each end of the blade


sod rolls; elevation transmitter in the background



laying the carpet ...


Plouffe Park is behind the Plant Recreation Centre at the corner of Preston and Somerset. The playing fields were torn up last fall in order to lower the ground level several feet. This permits the fields to function as a storm basin in case of severe flooding expected only every 50 years or so. The Park is the lowest point in the entire Preston street catchment area, and has no natural overland outflow.

The bulldozer spreading the topsoil was interesting to watch, as in a single pass it moved the soil to a very flat grade. After a dozen passes in various directions, the soil was as level as a tabletop. Each end of the blade is connected to an on board computer that is connected to a transmitter at the side of the field (visible in the background of photo 2).

Sod was delivered by a flatbed at noon Wednesday, and positioned on the field by a forklift. Another tractor positioned the rolls at the edge of the field and unrolled the strips of grass in less than minute. Each strip of grass extended half way down the length of the soccer pitch. Workers with rakes did the final positioning. A powered roller pressed it down, and a larger tanker truck of water washed the grass immediately behind the laying crew.

By 5pm, about 20% of the Park had been greened.

DCA - AGM Tonight

There is a community association for the neighborhood bounded on the east by Bay St - on the north by the Ottawa River - on the west by the O-Train tracks - and the south by Carling Avenue. Called the Dalhousie Community Association (DCA) after the now-retired ward name for the area, the association concerns itself with planning, traffic, and social issues in this mixed income changing neighborhood that incorporates both "Chinatown" and "Little Italy".

Their Annual General Meeting is tonight at 7pm at the Dalhousie Centre, corner of Empress and Somerset, 3rd floor. Free cookies. I'll be baking my special nutritious unfatening gingerbread/peanut butter combo cookies. Be sure to come on time in order to get a few. Don't deprive your children of these treats, bring them too.

There will be short panel discussion on (the lack of) park space in the community. Did you know our neighborhood has the lowest amount of city park space of any neighborhood in the city? Now this might now be a disaster if the area consisted of detached homes on large green lots, but this is a fairly dense neighborhood on small lots with what green space remaining is under threat from property owners paving their yards and the City which is eager to convert our green space into transportation corridors. But a number of opportunities exist to improve and quickly add to the park space, if the city can be convinced to act.

Should be a pleasant evening, somewhat interesting, and maybe even fun. Come-on out !

New Floodlights, Plant Recreation Centre

Work crews have removed the old floodlights from the Plant Rec Centre playing fields "Plouffe Park". As of this afternoon, six new posts and new floodlights were installed. Last week, the city removed the hockey boards. On the north side, against the tot lot, crews were busy today installing new chain link fencing to separate the soccer fields from the path and playstructures.

Hopefully, sod will soon appear on the playing fields. It will be great to have a large green space again.

Seeing work done (ie benches, garbage cans, light standards, paving) to bring visible community benefits is so satisfying after spending all last year in the dust and mud of endless sewer reconstruction (necessary, but after its done, there's no visible amenity). I look forward to seeing the new trees turn green and the shrubs go into the planting zones that are now desolate waste strips.

The dust and mud has returned for this year, with crews working from Oak south to Gladstone. They have cut up and removed portions of the sidewalks to install temporary water lines for the businesses and homes on the west side of the street.

Vietnamese Museum & Offices

Test drilling has occured at the vacant lot, corner of Somerset St and Preston. It looks like we might soon see the construction of the Vietnamese centre. It will have a museum, office, and meeting space on the upper floors, and one or two storefronts at ground level. It is diagonally opposite the Plant Recreation centre and existing Vietnamese Monument. The garage entrance is off the Preston side. Question: will sewer and water connections be dug before or after the reconstruction and repaving of Preston?

Parole Office Political Decision Again

"This Government has listened to the concerns voiced at last night's Town Hall meeting organized by the Correctional Service of Canada, and is no longer considering relocation of the Ottawa Parole Office to 1010 Somerset Street," ministry of public safety spokesman Christopher McCluskey wrote in an e-mail to the Citizen.

On Parole - The Meeting

The Parole Office meeting was last night at the Bronson Centre.

Meeting Format
Correctional Services tried to have a series of little workgroups, but was talked out of it. Work groups are find when a large percentage of the attendees share a certain knowledge level, but when facts are scarce this format serves to create little silos of (mis)information and keep people unaware. The question and answer format instead allowed people to get some additional information and judge the agendas/merits of others and their opinions. The wiki format wins hands down in this case.

The Pros
The moderator was excellent. I found myself thoughout the meeting amazed at her calmness, flexibility, unobtrusiveness, and patience. Kudos to CSC for hiring her.

The representatives from CSC were calm and articulate. They didn't try to bore the audience to death. Their difficulty in providing some facts seemed to genuinely stem from the complexity of the situation. Nonetheless their credibility continually took a beating as the meeting went on and contradictions became apparent. Make no doubt they were selling 1010 Somerset as a site; their protests that no decision was made, it was a genuine consultation, etc didn't convince me.

The audience was an interesting mix. There were cheerleaders for the parole office, people seeking more info and expressing their suspicions, and a vocal NO WAY portion.
Everyone was polite, listened to others, and learned. It was not a "no" rally as I had feared.

The Cons
Fuzzy factoids: too much time was spent chasing down basic facts that CSC should have provided beforehand if they genuinely wanted discussion. And when CSC gave the facts, they too often proved elusive. Here's some examples:
1) less than 3% of offenders re-offend violently - but over what time frame? Is this in their lifetime or while on parole? how does one reconcile this to...
2) 36.6% of ex-criminals are sent back to jail
3) 20% (40 persons) are lifers, ie murderers. Are these the same ones that re-offend violently?
4) the parole office operates during normal business office hours. It won't attract parolees to the area at night. Oops, except for the occasional night it might be open. Which is maybe 3 times a week. This sort of slow extraction of information from CSC damages their credibility. The ordinary citizen has to wonder what else they are hiding/not acknowledging.
5) Only 8 to 10 offenders visit the office per day for meetings. Later this became 6 -8 per day. Then six. This is about 2000 visits per year. These are for interviews, programs, and other nice things. Oops, except for those invited back to the office so they can be rearrested. [My source working in the parole office estimates it's 16 people per day, if you include those who come in for urinalysis tests, and this number may increase as half-way houses exit the sampling market.]
6)they already live here. 75 parolees live within 1km of the site; 12 more if the boundary goes to 1200m; totalling 100 in "wider centretown", which later turns out might include Vanier. But a ten square mile area is not the same as one site on Somerset St.
7) the main advantage of the site is bus access. Few parolees ever need to visit the office.
8) another advantage of 1010 Somerset is it is PWC owned. So why not look at other PWC buildings, in the downtown, Tunney's, or elsewhere. This smells too much like CSC won't put them in a civil service office building but will put them in our community. What's wrong with 240 Sparks, where the Holt Renfrew crowd could brush shoulders with fellow citizens?
9)Fed offenders commit only 1% of crimes, so don't worry, its other people who are dangerous. This ignores the nature of the crimes (small property crimes vs crimes against the person, including murder) and skips over what percent of the population the offenders are. If they are .5% of the population, then their likelihood of committing crimes - and community risk - is twice as high. Fuzzy factoids >> distrust.
10) will the crime rate go up because of the parole office? (ie, risk). No, CSC says, because parolees won't hang around the office with its 30 peace officers. But their clients are the ones that got caught, ie are the stupid ones, the impulsive. And it won't cause any problems to treat pedophiles close to schools and daycares (except for the ones that can't come in because they can't be trusted to be close to schools...) or have alcholics walk past bars to get to the office.

Alienating Allies
I was glad to see a contingent of pro-parole office people at the meeting. It takes guts to go out for a unpopular cause. Unfortunately, they did not win over anyone because of their intemperate tactics. It doesn't help to call those questioning CSC "bigots", " buncha hicks", "moral panic", "NIMBY". I didn't hear anyone question the utility of the parole system let alone attack it. The focus was admirably direct: where should it be, should it be here, what are the risks. Yes, there were a contingent who were opposed; they were not a howling mob, and could have been won over. I understand why it makes some sense to locate it near the cons, I want to know what the risks are too; this is not intolerance: it's intelligence.

Bad Odor
If it hadn't been for all the fuss about the Elgin/Cooper (current) location, I probably would not have had much interest in the CSC office. But CSC is not proposing to put it in Rockcliffe, New Edinburgh, or the Glebe, where high concentrations of senior bureaucrats can run endless battles. They are proposing to put it in the lowest income neighborhood of the city, between its main public school and main park & rec facility, where all traffic is funnelled onto the one street that runs in front of 1010 Somerset. I just gotta ask myself: if the affluent and well-connected don't want it, if the civil servants don't want to share their office buildings with it, why should I want it? Recall in my previous post I asked a CSC parole office worker about locating it near their house: "NO! I think not."

Missing in Action
Devonshire School, the Plant Pool Rec.Assoc. and Hintonburg and Dalhousie associations, amongst others, were active in this issue. It was good to see local business owners out too: I recognized Luciano Gervasi and Silvano Musca. Councilor Holmes was there and made an admirably direct and platitude-free brief statement. Our MP and MPP had office assistants at the meeting, expressing "concern" but I did not hear the same firm degree of opposition to this site as they had expressed against the Elgin site. No mention was made of St Francois d'Assise school and the 280 kids there, have they been consulted? (Disclosure: one of my kids went to St Marys and the other to St Francois - both walked the Somerset route every day for years).

Also missing was any indication that CSC might engage in further community consultation. The short-notice consultation process seems to be done.

Shuffling the PAROLE OFFICE to Somerset St

The present location of the Parole Office on Elgin Street has been subject to a lot of complaint from area politicians and community groups. Corrections Canada has suggested addressing their unhappiness by relocating the office to 1010 Somerset (pictured above) conveniently located between the Plant Recreation Centre and Devonshire Public School.

They are holding a public consultation meeting at the Bronson Centre at 7pm on Monday, March 30th. Comments can also be sent to www.csc-scc.gc.ca/consultation.

The office will serve about 200 federal offenders a year. It employs about 36 parole officers and others.

Advantages of the proposed location (compared to the Elgin site) include the relative absense of senior bureaucrats living in our neighborhood [invaluable for throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks], the lower income profile of the area, and perhaps the on-street amenities. They also chose a spot that's almost out of each local councilor's ward, being on the boundary of Hintonburg and Somerset wards.