Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Edmonton, Niagara, Toronto: Are We Ready for Epic Flooding?

More deluges are coming. Here’s how cities can prepare

Post Malone had performed three songs at his July 25 tour stop at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium when the wind started to pick up and the sky darkened. Moments later, a rainstorm erupted, sparking chaos as more than 30,000 fans sought shelter.

A short distance away, winds approaching eighty-five kilometres per hour and sheets of sideways rain pummelled the city’s annual KDays exhibition, forcing families to shelter in place.

Within an hour, the storm unleashed thirty millimetres of rain, causing torrents of water to run through low-lying neighbourhoods. On social media, footage quickly emerged of freeways and underpasses transformed into rivers and lakes, of iron manholes exploding into geysers, of stranded residents and flooded basements.

This was just one of several storms that walloped Edmonton over the course of several weeks, each leaving behind it a trail of destruction. By the end of July, the typically sunny city had accumulated more than 580 millimetres of rain, putting it in the running for the wettest summer in history. At the time, Edmonton officials estimated that this summer’s storms could cost the city between $20–$30 million to clean up, while accumulating some $230 million in insured damages.

Though shocking, what happened in Edmonton could be “a preview for every Canadian city,” according to Alireza Bayat, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Alberta, whose research focuses on underground infrastructure.

Just a few days after the Edmonton floods, several communities in the Niagara region woke up to flooded homes and destroyed crops following a series of localized downpours that dumped up to 146 millimeters of rain. In early August, Quebec was hit with torrential storms, causing widespread flooding and landslides and triggering a state of emergency for a portion of the Laurentians. And on September 2, Toronto was hit with a massive “hundred-year” thunderstorm that triggered extensive flooding and power outages.

Flooding has become the most common and costly climate disaster in Canada, according to the Canadian Climate Institute, affecting almost every region in the country and averaging nearly $800 million in insured damages each year. To make matters worse, Canadian cities—80 percent of which were at least partially built on floodplains—are aging and, in many cases, rely on infrastructure that was not built to withstand the deluges we see today.

Over the past decade, municipalities across Canada have ramped up their flood mitigation efforts. Major cities, including Edmonton, Calgary, and Toronto, have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in projects designed to protect against extreme weather, building seawalls to brace against rising waters, engineering sophisticated drainage systems to divert floodwaters away from vulnerable communities, and expanding green spaces to absorb rainfall. Experts say these investments are beginning to pay off.

Jennifer Drake, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carleton University and an expert on stormwater management and green infrastructure, says the country’s doing a good job of preventing “the worst outcomes associated with........

© The Walrus