East York resident wants city to add rain gardens to basement flooding subsidy
Compared to a patch of grass, a rain garden absorbs about 30 per cent more water, while supporting native plants, animals and pollinators.

TheStar.com
Sept. 20, 2017
Samantha Beattie

A bee hovers over late summer blooms as Marc Yamaguchi admits he didn’t spray a single drop of water on his garden this year.

Instead, he relied on rain water routed from roof to ground via a downspout. Known as a rain garden, Yamaguchi says it’s a green way to help prevent basement flooding, manage storm water and improve water quality.

As one the founders of the Rain Gardens United initiative, Yamaguchi has been pushing for residents to adopt the rain garden design since 2015. In three years, the initiative has achieved 31 rain gardens, mostly in Yamaguchi’s East York neighbourhood.

“The idea is to make water go down as opposed to across my property,” Yamaguchi said. “A rain garden prevents water from meandering back into my home, and instead feeds the plants.”

He’s experienced basement flooding first hand, with a slow leak damaging the floor and his family’s belongings.

In 2015, he built a rain garden for about $1,000, which included digging a metre-deep hole a few metres away from his house and refilling it with a combination of the area’s natural sandy soil and loosely compacted “good stuff” – peat moss, pulverized mulch and compost. He redirected his downspout from his driveway to his rain garden and planted hearty, native perennial species.

Since then, his basement has stayed dry.

Rain gardens like Yamaguchi’s can hold up to 30 per cent more water than a patch of grass, according to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

That water would otherwise runoff driveways and lawns, enter the storm sewers and end up in creeks, rivers and Lake Ontario. Runoff water picks up pollutants, like chloride from road salt, and erodes waterways. Runoff water is often warm and causes river and lake temperatures to rise, harming fish species.

In its 2016 Living City Report Card, the conservation authority recommended rain gardens as a technique to improve storm water management and naturally filter and cool runoff water.

“We want to manage rain where it falls, catch it, absorb it, keep it out of the city’s storm system so when we have massive storm events we have more catchment,” said Sheila Boudreau, senior landscape architect with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

Yamaguchi wants the city to incentivize rain gardens, as part of its Basement Flooding Protection Subsidy Program that helps residents pay for flood protection devices like backwater valves and sump pumps.

“With increasingly frequent severe weather events, it is essential that homeowners take appropriate action to reduce the risk of basement flooding on their own private property,” said the City of Toronto’s website.

However, the city told the Star it would not be providing incentives for residential storm water management.

“Incentives for residential properties are more difficult and expensive to quantify and verify. This can result in funds that would otherwise be dedicated to city storm water management initiatives going instead to administering an incentive program,” said city spokesperson Ellen Leesti in an email.

Yamaguchi is not discouraged.

“At some point, the city will recognize that green infrastructure will have a very important place complementing grey infrastructure,” he said. “Rain gardens are a really effective measure and maybe one day the city will change its mind.”