Help may be on the way for flood-prone Toronto neighbourhood

Residents in a flood-plagued north end Toronto neighbourhood say they've been waiting more than a decade for the city to make good on a plan to fix the problem.

More than 150 homes in Winston Park, near Dufferin Street and Wilson Avenue, are hit by serious flooding every five years or so, residents told CBC Toronto. And they're worried the severe storms that are to blame will soon become more frequent due to climate change.

One of those residents is Fadi Elyoussef, who's lived on Whitley Avenue  with his wife Reem and two children for 12 years.

"We're constantly living in fear — my kids don't even want to go into the basement when it rains," he said. "It's an ongoing nightmare."

Elyoussef said he installed a sump pump, a backflow protector pipe, and water barrier on the exterior of his house. But those precautions were quickly overwhelmed during a 2018 storm that has prompted he and his neighbours to ask the city for a permanent fix.

"In our house, the F-word is flood," Reem Elyoussef said. "We can't live in fear anymore. I wouldn't wish this on anybody."

The local councillor, James Pasternak, said he's been trying for years to convince the city to address the flooding issues in the neighbourhood. During Tuesday's meeting of the city's infrastructure and environment committee, councillors approved his motion calling on staff to provide an update on efforts to solve the problem by next month's city council meeting.

"There is a feeling in the neighbourhood that this work is long overdue and homeowners have incurred flooding, property damage and ongoing worry about the consequences of the next extreme weather event," part of Pasternak' motion reads.

His motion points out that city staff have been aware of the problem for at least 12 years, and although some work has been proposed, no permanent solutions have ever made it past the planning stage.

Pasternak said Winston Park's geography is at least partially to blame for the basement flooding it experiences. The homes are built around DeHavilland Mossie Park, which acts as a sort of catch basin since it's the lowest elevation in the area. 

Exacerbating the problem, Pasternak said, is the fact that storms tend to come from the northwest, and can approach the neighbourhood unimpeded, thanks to the open spaces of the  old Downsview air base, immediately to the north of Winston Park.

"It's a pocket in and around the park, where the infrastructure has not kept up with the extreme weather events we've been getting," Pasternak said.

That stormwater overwhelms the sewer pipes and has nowhere to go but into basements, he said, so the answer is to install new pipes that are big enough to handle the excess rain.

Another solution is to upgrade a holding tank that's buried inside the park itself. That would handle more  runoff from the sewer pipes temporarily, until the storm abates, then return the runoff to the storm sewer.