Monday, August 31, 2009

Blame the "inevitable".... never mind a solution!!!

Surely in this day and age of engineered solutions there must be a reasonable fix to this continuous flooding problem on Grafton Street.... I'm sure if they just widened the intersections at the "Action Corner" as opposed to spending all that money on a silly Roundabout then the City would have plenty of money left over to deal with a solution to the Grafton Street area... Holland College is doing a much needed major expansion and upgrade near this flooding problem area and the City should be working on a "fix" to help with this great new investment.... yes it's probably "inevitable" the World is going to end... but waiting around to see it happen and blaming the "inevitable" just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me... the City's new Spin Doctor must be at work....
Charlottetown storm flooding inevitable: officials
Monday, August 31, 2009
CBC News
Public works officials say there's nothing that can be done to prevent occasional storm flooding in some low-lying areas of Charlottetown.
The weekend storm caused flooding on some city streets, especially on lower Grafton and Queen streets.
"It's tidal flow out to the harbour. You can only put your pipes so low in the harbour. And the lower you get, all of a sudden you get the influence of the tidal action pushing back up the pipe," said Paul Johnston, manager of public works with the city.
"It's all gravity systems. So, if you've got some spot within the city that's not too high above sea level, getting that long length of pipe with the proper grade to get it out to the harbour is just unfortunately impossible."
The system is able to accommodate most storms, said Johnston.
"If you get an extraordinary event, it is going to cause some ponding in some locations for the short term," he added.
About 100 millimetres of rain fell in the Charlottetown area late Saturday and early Sunday.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Spending thousands on a problem that may occur once a year is not a good use of Public Funds and while I'm on a roll you wouldn't consider picking up a hammer to build a new mall yourself you would hire (or buy) a specialist to do so why do you and hundreds of other Islanders think they know better than traffic engineers what will work at the corner of Allen and Mt. Edward?

Tim Banks said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tim Banks said...

Richie... good managers direct and no we wouldn't grab a hammer to build a mall but we wouldn't let the architect or engineer build the mall either without some review of the plan... we'd develop a "cost return" business plan first and then manage who we would use. In the case of the Allen St. roundabout there is “NO cost return engineered traffic study” and if there was one supporting a good use of City funds I'd be the first person on board. In the case of the Grafton Street flooding it continues to be a major problem that has easy "engineering solutions" like a retention pond on one of the decommissioned tank site among other solutions... my point is that Grafton Street is a significant gateway to Charlottetown and with the new investments from Holland College the City at the very least should look for solutions as opposed to sticking their heads in the sand and blaming things on the "inevitable"... traffic engineers are sometimes a lot like our “economists” and they can hand you a report slanted whatever way you want it and that's the case here as Council didn't get a “roundabout” at the Peter Pan so they're now trying to "slip" one over on us taxpayers.... Some time ago I formally requested a copy of the plans and the traffic report for Allen Street so I could have our engineers look at it but to date the City has not had the courtesy of allowing us to view such...