Residents of townhouses on the east side of Granby Road in Grand Forks say that city infrastructure has been causing their access and parking lot to flood each time there’s a heavy rain.
On May 31, when the city was preoccupied with containing the Kettle and Granby rivers within their banks, resident Ken Harshenin woke up in the early morning to find a pool of rain water lapping just under the bottom edge of his front door. A culvert that runs under Granby Road appears to empty out just above a garden and the townhouses’ parking lot, where water pools if the hillside is over-saturated as well.
“We will be blessed all day with this,” Harshenin said on May 31, standing in gum boots in the water. “We’re not happy campers.”
Harshenin says he’s brought the issue up with the city before, though the problem, he says has been around for longer than he’s lived there.
A 1984 city document provided to the Gazette points the blame at the cement slabs used in the car ports of the townhouses. The report from the building inspector at the time notes that the slabs slope towards the building. At the time, the inspector recommended new eaves troughs and that the building owner redo the cement.
But Harshenin says those updates would not fix the pool in the parking lot – which was at least 20 centimetres deep after the rains abated on May 31. (In the past, the city has pumped out the water).
Now, the city says it is investigating the cause of the persistent flooding. A city representative told the Gazette that public works will conduct dye tests to track water runoff and do other investigations to find the cause of the problem.
@jensenedw
Jensen.edwards@grandforksgazette.ca
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