Already drowning in debt, Norfolk needs millions more to fix stormwater system

A report on the worrying state of Norfolk County’s urban stormwater system left councilors with a sinking feeling.

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The cash-strapped rural municipality must find more than $10 million to pay for urgently needed maintenance to the ponds, pipes, catch basins and culverts that keep excessive rainwater from flooding streets and causing soil erosion.

But that estimate is based on an inspection of just 10 per cent of Norfolk’s known stormwater infrastructure — meaning the true cost to get the system in line with provincial regulations could be many times higher.

“What we’re finding in the field is a little bit scary,” public works director Andrew Grice told councilors at last week’s meeting.

In May, Grice’s department created a three-person “stormwater team” that has since found “numerous deficiencies,” said Stephanie Davis, Norfolk’s director of environmental services.

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Staff have inspected four of Norfolk’s 25 stormwater ponds — which are built by developers and later become a municipal responsibility — and found some overgrown with vegetation and with access paths in poor condition.

Stormwater maintenance manager Chris Dunn said one pond in a Port Dover subdivision — last inspected in 2019 — will require more than $1 million in “unsuspected, unbudgeted costs” that could have been avoided with regular maintenance at a fraction of the price.

“In five years’ time, these ponds can get quite out of control,” Dunn said.

Stormwater has long been the “poor cousin” of Norfolk’s water and sewage systems, Grice told councillors.

Public works staff use closed-circuit cameras and acoustic monitoring devices to search the pipes that move treated drinking water for leaks that cost the municipality hundreds of millions of dollars each year. But there are no electronic eyes on the stormwater system, creating situations like the pipe under a Port Dover street — and near a sewage pumping station — that Dunn said is “completely blocked” with driftwood and other debris.

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A storm surge down that blocked pipe “could wreak chaos,” Dunn said.

He told advisors of one storm sewer found to have a previously unknown “cross bore,” where utility companies punch holes on either side of a storm sewer and snake a gas line through.

“There are probably a lot of cross bores that are out there that we’re not aware of,” Dunn said.

A lack of knowledge about Norfolk’s stormwater infrastructure is hampering efforts to fix it. Staff are busy locating and identifying what is in the field, which often does not match the data in the county’s geographic information system (GIS).

For example, Dunn said, inspection of a 2.5-kilometer stretch of Ireland Road in Simcoe found more than 70 catch basins not recorded in the system, and staff have added 65 kilometers of unidentified stormwater pipe to the GIS.

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It is “unknown” who owns some pipes, who is responsible for them, and even where their start and end points are, Dunn said. But those investigations are being put off so staff can prioritize the most pressing needs.

With more than 5,000 known catch basins and more than 2,000 manholes still to be inspected, more unwelcome surprises could be in store.

“We need to get a handle on it,” Dunn told councillors. “We’ve only gotten through 10 per cent of what we do know that we have. It’s what we don’t know that’s another factor.”

Davis told advisors her department is concerned about stormwater’s potential effect on current properties and future development. Not maintaining the system increases the risk of flooding and erosion as “intense storms” caused by climate change become more common, she explained.

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And because the province now insists on proper stormwater system monitoring and maintenance, Norfolk faces financial penalties for not acting quickly to address the problem.

“We have to show that we’re doing something and becoming compliant,” Davis said.

But there is no new provincial money available to fix stormwater systems, leaving municipalities forced to foot the bill. That is a tough sell in Norfolk, where residential water bills are set to rise 10.6 per cent in 2025 and projected to double by 2034.

The geographically large yet sparsely populated rural county — where only half the roughly 70,000 residents are on municipal water — is also staring down a 10-year, $1-billion infrastructure repair and replacement plan that gets more expensive by the month.

Faces fell around the table as advisors came to grips with the magnitude of the problem.

“Did I hear that we’ve only so far looked at about 10 per cent of the urban (stormwater) infrastructure … and we’ve found tens of millions of dollars of repairs?” Coun. Alan Duthie asked.

“I hope the rest is in better shape,” Dunn replied.

“Me too,” Duthie sighed.

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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