Heather Wright/The Independent

Before Wyoming residents were bailing water out of their basements April 4, the town was formulating a plan to deal with major storm water drainage issues plaguing the town and Camlachie.

April 8, dozens of residents came to the town council meeting after dealing with heavy rains which for some people led to water and sewage in their basement.

Mike and Tara Vandendool live on the lowest part of Brooke Street. The couple told council they’ve had water problems since 2020. Solutions suggested by town staff, including building a berm in the back yard, didn’t seem practical to them. Instead, the couple spend time checking their catch basins. During the most recent storm Tara and her friend cleared the catch basins near their homes.

“My neighbors I were clearing – with a snow shovel – the catch basins on my street and within 20 minutes, the road was clear.”

She believes the town has to do more to keep them clean. “We checked before we came to catch basin in our backyard. If I could get in there by taking the lid off, I could probably stand on the debris that is in there.”

Mike added; “You haven’t cleaned my drain since I’ve owned this house. You haven’t been there.”
Paul da Silva, director of public works, said the town does flush the pipes and in 2023, put cameras through the entire system to see if there were blockages.

“Most of our infrastructure in the village of Wyoming was constructed in the 60s and 70s. Obviously doesn’t meet today’s standards…right off the hop, there’s a capacity issue, but even when you look at capacity issues, we could replace every pipe in the village tomorrow and we still have downstream constraints.” he said.

Most of Wyoming’s water goes through the Stonehouse Drain, which also runs through Enniskillen and Petrolia. da Silva said that’s where debris is blocking the water from escaping quickly.

He says the town is looking at alternatives to getting water out of Wyoming, including using a holding pond.

“It’s not going to solve the problem, but it helps to take a little bit of that downstream pressure off.”
Francis Brooks lives near McKay Park also know as McKay Lake, as her neighbours call it when it rains.
Brooks says the water moves onto her yard. She wants to see a drain put into the park; da Silva says staff is looking for solutions to the flooding in the park this year.

For residents of Netty’s Way, the problem is more pressing. Brandy McKinley says raw sewage is coming into her basement during the heavy rains.

“Since 2020 we’ve had two major floods to the tune of $200,000 damage. So we’ve been waiting six years now for a solution,” she told council. The family has done everything they’ve been asked including putting in a backflow valve and checking it and their sump pump regularly. “What do we do in the meantime, while we’re waiting for a solution; short of like selling our house, which really we couldn’t do, because nobody would buy it. So where does this leave us?” she asked.

“We are out of insurance. So it happened again. The very little amount of insurance we have wouldn’t even clean up the bio waste of my house.”

CAO Adam Sobanski says Netty’s Way is the lowest point of town and is near a pumping station.
The town, he says, is looking at other measures to fix the problem including ensuring no one’s sump pump is putting storm water into the sewage system.

And da Silva says council will look at a program to help deal with the storm water problem at the end of April. He’s suggesting the town use plumbers to inspect sump pumps, foundation drains and roof spouts to see if they’re funnelling storm water into the sewage system causing the overflows.

About 200 homes will be inspected in Camlachie. da Silva expects that will take about five months and $18,000.

“We can take all the lessons learned from that and bring them to Wyoming so that we can really hit the ground running when it comes to doing here,” he told the Wyoming residents.

Deputy Mayor Netty McEwen wants Wyoming’s drainage issues to be addressed as quickly as possible. “How fast can we do Wyoming?”

“We plan to act fast,” da Silva said.

“There’s 1,000 homes here – we need to inspect them all.

“It is going to, unfortunately, be slow process. But, I said this at our Environmental Services Committee, if we just have a little bit of courage to step up and do this, and face, the issues and actually take action, I think we can make a really positive difference, and I’m committed to doing that.”

Sobanski urged residents to let town staff know about their problems and then open their doors to the town’s inspectors.

“Really, it will depend on the residents, how willing they are to let us inspect the sump pumps.”