'Stress is killing me:' Markham woman blames bylaw change for flood

YorkRegion.com
Sept. 5, 2017
Tim Kelly

A Markham widow who has never had a flood at her home in 35 years knew she was in for trouble a year ago because of a bylaw change requiring how the water drains from her neighbour's property.

And in mid-July, her worst nightmare came true, costing her $2,000 out of pocket, after her basement flooded causing severe damage.

Violet Haslett, 74, has lived at 38 Avondale Cres. in the Wootten Way-Ramona Boulevard area since 1982 and said she's never had a flooding incident.

But she said on July 16, when Markham was hit by heavy rainfall, the fact her next-door neighbour had his eavestroughs and downspout run-off flow onto his property — about three feet higher than hers — led to water rolling onto her property and into her basement.

She said prior to last year, her neighbour's downspouts ran into the local sanitary sewer, as hers do, but when he got new eavestroughs and downspouts, under the new bylaw, he was required to drain run-off onto his property, not into the sewer system, thus the unprecedented flooding on her property.

"I'm a low-income senior trying to survive here. I've never had problems until this thing happened. The city is not giving me anything, they just say, 'What do you want us to do?' It's the bylaw," said Haslett.

While her insurance company is taking care of most of the damage, she's been hit with a $2,000 deductible.

Widowed in 2004, she's had a tough few years.

"I had breast cancer in 2015, a broken wrist in 2016, I dislocated my shoulder this year, I've had more than my share of stuff and I don't need more stress with this issue too," she said, looking into her basement.

"The stress is killing me, all because of one bylaw."

The City of Markham responded by saying it has a bylaw for downspouts that requires drainage to be discharged away from neighbours. The City of Markham does not have a requirement for old development homes to disconnect from the storm sewers when eavestroughs or downspouts are replaced.

It did say it has a sanitary downspout disconnection program where the City pursues "disconnection of downspouts that connect to the sanitary sewer system. Sometimes 1 to 5 per cent of downspouts go to the sanitary as opposed to the 95 to 99 per cent that go to the storm sewer. We identify specific downspouts to disconnect and subsidize disconnection from sanitary. This is referred to as 'inflow reduction' and is a standard industry practice and is also mandated by the Ministry of Environment — York Region has prescribed inflow and infiltration reduction targets for the sanitary sewer. Some cities disconnect all downspouts which is important if the city has combined sewers (like many Toronto areas) — but Markham does not have combined sewers so we do not need to disconnect all downspouts, and instead just target the few ones overloading the sanitary sewer. The program is in its fifth phase of implementation in 2017 and will be expanded to additional areas based on the flooding in 2017."