A road that floods regularly

Ideas on what to do to attract more people that wish to live in Bruderheim

By Walter Schneider

A road that floods regularly

For us to be able to attract more families — families with children or planning to have children — to come to Bruderheim and settle here, a little extra is required.  As good as Bruderheim looks, it must and can be made to look better. 

Maybe that is what Bruderheim is doing, but one has to wonder.  A few years ago it had been decided to contract the public works department of the County of Strathcona to perform the maintenance work necessary to keep the Town's infrastructure up to par and operational.  The state of repair of all communities in the County of Strathcona is clearly visible to anyone visiting them, and it is impressively good.  It appears that Bruderheim's state and quality of repairs don't measure up to theirs and are substandard. 

The state of our streets makes a big impression on visitors.  It will not leave a good impression on visitors to see roads getting flooded.  This portion of 48th Ave from about 51st St to Queen St gets flooded regularly.  At least in recent years.  The problem is a relatively new one.

The photo on the right shows the view in the spring of 2005, looking east from the location of the woodworking shop half-way between 50th and 51st St.  The widest expanse of the flooding that can be seen is at 50th St.

The next photo was taken at 50th St on 48th Ave and shows a view looking west.  The water had subsided a little from where it had been the day before, when it had been right up to the yellow centre line.
   Some of the damage being done by the water and ice (it froze during the nights) to the pavement is visible in the left part of the foreground of the picture. 

There are no storm sewers in Bruderheim.  Melt water and other run-off is being carried off by the roads.  There is nothing wrong with that design principle, provided the water has a place to run off to and isn't left standing anywhere, or else the water will eventually cause a lot of cracks in the road and seep through the pavement into the road bed, turning it into mud and causing the pavement to disintegrate irreparably.
   There is an opening in the south curb of 48th Ave, just west of the intersection of 50th St and 48th Ave, that is intended to let the water from the road drain away, but that is not working too well.  More about that a little farther down on this page.
   The water that is supposed to run off here towards the railroad tracks south of 48th Ave comes all the way from as far as 51st St, to the west, and from as far as Queen St., to the east.

I already mentioned that the water causes damage to the road surface.  Given enough time, the water will cause the road bed to deteriorate as well.  However, the road is not all that is being damaged by the water. 

It is not a good idea to have water standing on concrete drive ways.  The drive way at Randy's Woodworking Shop is being flooded, too.  The damage done by the water to that drive way is quite obvious.  Who will pay for repairing that drive way when the water damage becomes so great that repairs need to be done?  The photo to the right shows what is left of a drive-way surface that once sported a very nice smooth finish.  That portion of the drive way is crumbling on account of repeated flooding.

The following photos show to what extent Randy's drive way is being flooded.  It must be a source of aggravation to both Randy and the Town office to have to deal repeatedly with the consequences of a problem that could very easily and with relatively little effort be solved.  What is holding things up?  Why not eliminate the cause of the problem?

The problem cause did not always exist.  It came about and gradually built up as the years went by, becoming worse with every subsequent year.  Why does the Town not do a little maintenance work to prevent the run-off water from flooding the road?

 

The preceding photos were taken by Randy in the spring of this year.

Here are photos that show the circumstances causing the problem.

It had rained a little on the 17th of May.  It's a good thing that it hadn't rained more.  48th Ave might have flooded as badly as it did in the spring.  The dark portion of the pavement  extending out from the curb indicates the area that had become flooded after the rain.  Notice also that the run-off carried with it a lot more than just water.  Aside from that, doesn't this road ever get cleaned, or does the Town wish to demonstrate that, if left alone for long enough, backed-up water can even turn a road into a swamp.	The opening in the curb by the white post that marks its location for the snow-plough operator is the place where the run-off from the south-half of 48th Ave is supposed to drain towards the ditch running along the rail road tracks visible in the photo below. Notice how far the water had backed onto the road (the dark stain on the pavement) after that little bit of rain we had on May 17, 2005.
The water backing up from here extends almost all of the way to Randy's Woodworking Shop and stopped short of reaching his garden.  It must be tough at times to cut the grass there, and obviously not even the Town is able to cut the grass where it should be cut.  It shouldn't surprise anyone to see cat-tails growing in there soon.  That will be great.  The man-made swamp south of the curb will then not just provide the music of frogs and singing of mosquitoes but also the warbling of red-winged blackbirds to the people living on the north-side of 48th Ave.  Maybe this is nature at its best, but it is man-made and not good-quality town living. What is the message that visitors to town get from all of this?	The problem is that where there should be a ditch running from the curb (not visible at the bottom of the photo) to the drainage ditch running along the railroad tracks visible at the top of the photo.  Instead of a ditch, what you can see in this picture is a man-made miniature river delta that is a swamp doing well
It is all nice and good to clean up the road at this location, which was done, apparently during the week of July 4 to 10, 2005.  However, what good does it do to scrape the dirt and silt off the road and then to dump it on the grass right next to the road?  That will make cutting the grass there impossible, right?  (See photo to the right.)    Letting the reeds and Canary Reed Grass grow wild in the ditch that is supposed to carry the water away from this location will do little more than add about an inch a year to the decaying vegetation that is blocking the run-off ditch.   What is the plan?  Is the strip of swamp that the town is creating here through neglect supposed to be declared another "natural" area?	There will be no more cutting of grass here until that dirt that was scraped off the road is scraped off the grass and hauled away.     Is that part of the plan, that by dumping the dirt scraped off the road right next to the road the Town will save time and work at the cost of having to redo the paving on 48th Avenue?    Besides, not even scraping the dirt of the road could be done properly.  What is with that big clump of dirt that was left laying in the gutter?  Is that supposed to help the water run off the road?    Then there is still the problem of the weeds that grow all along 48th Ave, as in every road in town, in the crack between the curb and the pavement.  As Klara McMorran explained at the July 6, 2005 town council meeting, that will ultimately cause serious damage to our roads.

Come on guys!  Treating a problem symptom has never yet solved a problem cause.  It most certainly does nothing to prevent the problem symptom from re-occurring. 
   It is necessary here to clean out the drainage ditch, or else the flooding will become worse with each rain and every time the snow melts.

It would take perhaps two hours of backhoe work to fix that problem cause.  It seems to me that there is a backhoe standing in the maintenance yard.  Perhaps we could ask around to find someone capable of operating that backhoe.  However, I have been given to understand that the Town is negotiating with CN to determine what can be done to solve this problem.  It is not exactly a case of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, but perhaps it could be deemed "Town-administration and -council talking while 48th Ave drowns."

Half a solution won't work

In the fall of 2005 the Town cleared a stretch of the drainage ditch that is supposed to drain the water off the road and divert it around the south-side of the woodworking shop.  The satellite map shown here indicates where the work was done.  The job is not quite finished yet, although some of the town employees may think that they are done.  Unfortunately, the work done so far will do little to solve the flooding problem here.  The laws of nature will not permit water to flow uphill.  Therefore it is predictable that the flooding will recur as often and as severely as it did before.

Another problem that is growing worse

The situation at 48th Avenue is not the only location in Bruderheim where regular flooding occurs.  One of a few other locations is the west-side of the intersection of 49th Avenue and 51st Street (shown in the photo at the right).  At this location the water is supposed to run off into a ditch constructed for that purpose, right past the playground at that location.  The ditch is deep and wide enough to do that job, but the path from the road to that ditch is obstructed.  The obstruction gets a little bit worse with every rain we have and with every snowfall that melts.

The problem is that the water running off from the road is dirty.   The run-off carries with it sand, mud and assorted debris that gets washed off the road by rain or melting snow.  The solids that the run-off water carries get deposited where the rate of flow is low.  The rate of flow is low where there is an insufficient gradient, especially when the path of the run-off water is obstructed by grass and weeds.   That problem is what causes the regular and worsening flooding on 48th Avenue.   The same principle will eventually cause regular and worsening flooding at 51st Street and 49th Avenue.

With every rainfall another layer of dirt and mud gets deposited in such places.  The sediments built up a bit more every time and eventually grow to be so high that the run-off water can no longer run into the ditch.  Instead, the run-off water then floods the road.  That was visible during the snow-melt this Spring.  It was even more visible on the Monday of the long weekend in May, when we had a good amount of rain.  The run-off water did back up and flood the road here, right up to the centre of 51st Street.

As of now the water did not stand there for very long, but with every rain that falls the water will stand longer and longer, as it has no way to go.  It will then begin to seep into the road bed that carries the pavement, ultimately resulting in destructive frost heaves that will destroy the pavement here and will require expensive reconstruction of this portion of our roads.  Yet, it is so easy to avert that consequence of neglect.  Don't neglect to keep clear and clean out the path-ways through which water has to run off if it is not to cause serious and escalating deterioration and even total destruction of the road it is to run off from. 

As you can see in the photo, the grass had just been cut along that ditch, but the grass and weeds that grow right in the bottom of the start of the ditch were left alone, right where the water should ideally have the highest rate of flow.  Cutting the grass and weeds in such places is not all that needs to be done.  The sediments that settle in such places need to be dug up and removed on a regular basis.  "For want of a nail...."

We don't appear to teach a lot of nursery rhymes anymore, but this one should be required reading; and not just to teach children about actions (or lack thereof) and consequences:

For want of a nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

When I went to primary school, our Grade IV reader contained a story with a similar message.  The story was called "Bessere bei Zeiten" ("Repair in time"), about a farmer who neglected to fix a small problem with the thatch on the roof of his house.  Eventually that little problem grew in size, causing the rain to seep into the house, followed by gradually increasing rot that eventually became grave enough to cause the whole house to become inhabitable.
   I could never understand how anyone could be so dumb as not to do maintenance and make repairs in time to prevent greater damage to his very own property.  I don't want to beat this thought to death, but what about the timely maintenance of our roads? 
   It's all nice and good to follow the economic principles of consumerism, but our roads are vital, not disposable.

Anyway, on June 4th, Leo Genier and I spent an hour cutting the grass and cleaning out the first part of the drainage ditch that had apparently not ever been cleaned out for the past 20 years or so.  We found candy wrappers and various plastic debris, even glass from a broken beer bottle, under about a foot of sediment throughout the bottom of the ditch where we dug.  Maybe what we did will help a little to drain the water a bit better off the road.  We'll just have to wait for the next rainfall and see.

By the way, the garbage cans at the playground here at 49th Ave and 51st St have not been emptied for quite some time.  The garbage-truck crew may find it now to be a bit too much work to do that.  It will take some effort to lift up those barrels and tip them over onto the truck.  They are heavy.  That is not all the fault of the maintenance crew.  Someone has been dumping garbage bags with grass clippings into those barrels.  Was it too much effort for them to take their clippings to the curb on garbage day?  If we wish for our town to look nice, we should all do our thing and pitch in a bit by at least doing the right thing.

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Posted May 21, 2005
Updates:
2005 05 29 (to add description of worsening problem at 49th Ave and 51st St.)
2005 07 11 (added photos of how the flooding-problem got "fixed".
2005 08 17 (inserted photo depicting the state of the more or less permanent flooding at 48th Ave and 50th St)
2005 11 28 (added satellite map showing suggested location of ditching work and route)
2006 10 29 (reformated)