Flooding on Fifth Avenue not tied to Skye project, says mayor
Sylvie Paillard
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An angry downtown resident is demanding the District of Squamish come up with a solution after his home was flooded for the second time in less than two months during Tuesday's (Jan. 2) heavy rains.
"I just want to live like everybody else," said Ajrjinder Sangha. "I don't want to be dredging water out of my basement all the time when it rains."
Sangha's Fifth Avenue house flooded on Nov. 15 after a heavy downpour, forcing his entire family to cram into the second floor of the building. The flood damage was still being repaired when another deluge hit Squamish and filled his house with an estimated 6 to 8 inches of water on Tuesday.
Numerous downtown home-owners experienced the same problems this season and many blame the nearby Skye Development for diverting waterflow away from estuary marshland.
After the second flood, Sangha said he became livid and called Global Television News. Tuesday evening, he was broadcast across the province saying he's lived in the home for 24 years but only flooded once the Skye began construction. He also handed the reporter a article from last month stating the development only recently received building permits.
Sangha is now organizing a petition demanding that the district "get a proper study and implementation of drainage for the downtown area."
"It's the district's responsibility," he said in a Chief interview Wednesday (Jan. 3).
Mayor Ian Sutherland said residents are wrong to blame Skye for the flooding.
"Whether it's better or worse than other times is open for discussion, but there has been flooding in that area before," he said.
Skye development, said Sutherland, is actually helping the downtown's problems.
"They were using four pumps to pump water to the ocean side," said Sutherland."If Skye hadn't been doing that, especially during the last 48 hours, the downtown would have been worse, not better. They actually were decreasing the flooding."
Sutherland has, in the past, voluntarily removed himself from debate over the development since there is a potential conflict of interest. Sutherland owns a piece of property along a pond that Skye developers have agreed to rehabilitate. But the potential conflict is now being used against the mayor and he said he's getting "sick and tired" of the situation.
"Here is the deal: I own about one tenth of a pond and that's the only potential conflict. I don't own any other property, I don't own any of Skye Development and frankly people are just using this. I don't know why they're using this," he said. "The fact that the pond was a cleaner pond could benefit my property in theory. It's like resurfacing a road could benefit a property. But in the whole scheme or things I'm getting kind of sick and tired of people talking about it."
Sutherland said engineers have determined that the long term solution to downtown flooding is to replace culverts along Victoria Street and Fourth and Fifth Avenues with larger water conduits.
"Our staff worked as hard as they could to alleviate the problem but when you have that much rain in a short period of time, and it happens near high tide, there are issues," he said. "The fact remains when it rains it rains."
Sangha said that the district's proposed solution gives him little comfort.
"We've got flooded out once and now there's been a second flood," he said. "When is the work going to happen?"
