MONCTON – Some residents in a north-Moncton neighbourhood are concerned this year’s spring thaw of all the snow in the city could lead to flooding in their homes.
The Westbrook Circle neighbourhood sits near Jonathan Creek and has flooded several times when the creek overflowed.
Shawn Hendry bought his house there eight years ago and estimates it has flooded a half-dozen times since then, including twice last year. He said when he first moved, he had a separate apartment in his basement with two bedrooms and hardwood floors.
“Since then it’s continuously been gutted,” he said. “I try to fix it and it floods again.”
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Hendry said during the most recent flooding after a period of high rainfall in December, the water was gushing in through the drain in his basement and shooting four feet into the air. He had to use two sump pumps to try to slow down the flow of water.
“At 1:30 in the morning, the tide came in and it totally stopped all the flow and backed the water up through the city,” he said. “At that point, I was in big trouble.”
Hendry is afraid it will happen again during the next few weeks as the snow starts to melt.
“If it started to rain or anything, I’m pretty sure the water is going to come up to my basement windows and flood that way as well,” he said.
His neighbour Edgar Poirier managed to get through last April’s flood unscathed, but his house flooded in December. He knows it’s likely to happen this spring.
He said in December, firefighters had to help him pump water out of his basement because his sump pump couldn’t keep up. He said now he worries about the size of the snowbanks and especially the size of the mountain of snow at the city’s snow dump.
“It’s just up the road here,” he said. “If that starts to melt and doesn’t stop, we’ll lose the house.”
But Jeff Scott, general foreman for the streets division of Moncton public works, said the dump goes through a controlled drainage system and the city is not concerned that it will cause flooding.
Scott said a study by city engineers found that even if the snow at the dump melted as fast as possible, it contributes less than 1.5 per cent to the flow of Jonathan Creek.
“The type of flooding that we experienced last year is really outside our control,” he said. “That was a result of very quick snow melt and rain all together. So we’re hoping that that’s not going to be the case again this year. We’ll just have to react to the melting as it occurs.”
He said while the city expects the weather to stay cold through much of March, city crews have begun clearing culverts as part of their maintenance when they’re out widening roads and clearing snow.
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