While the folks back home sucked slop from their basements, the mayor, councillors and senior staff were at a conference in Ottawa. Taking a course on flood mitigation.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario gabfest also featured a session on protecting local democracy. A panelist was Gary Zalepa, our supreme leader, who this spring oversaw a vote in NOTL to reduce elected people and impair democracy.

Well, fallout from the Big Soak continues. This goes to the heart of governance issues. If we can’t trust our reps to deal with stuff like flooding or police the voracious developers in our midst, maybe it’s time to get some new ones.

Let’s talk about dewatering and that cute little creek meandering through Old Town. It’s called “One Mile” because that’s the exact distance between its mouth and that of the Niagara River.

It wanders drunkenly, sometimes looking benign and bucolic, sometimes fierce. It sure did a number on the Legion after the storms, pretty much trashing the place when it spilled over its banks.

Well, the creek may be a far bigger story in the future, once 56,500 gallons a day (214 cubic meters) pour into it from the Parliament Oak hotel site.

During construction, that water is being pumped 24/7 into our sewer system. During an epic rain event, all that rainwater joins it — the equivalent of 13 Olympic-sized pools — maybe explaining why your basement flooded. The pipes can’t handle it.

So pity the poor creek once the big hole is a parking garage for Mr. Marotta’s black Land Rover (and 200 other cars). This baby waterway could roar.

Water is already an issue. It’s a problem. Dewatering a town that sits on the shores of Lake Ontario and the banks of the Niagara, with a shallow water table, is an engineering challenge. And the responsibility of the people we elect.

It looks like they failed the test, says career engineer Ron Simkus. He’s discovered that while developers are granted permits to dump water into our sewers, nobody is monitoring it, policing it, enforcing the limits.

“It is astounding that neither the developer nor the region are showing any interest in monitoring compliance at a time when severe rainfalls curiously are causing residents sewers to back up,” says the director of the local residents’ association.

“The town will have to spend significant dollars to pay for monitoring, but it is necessary in order to gather real-time data about stormwater volumes and also unravel the mystery of whether the developer has intercepted an underground stream adjacent to One Mile Creek.”

We have issues now when the skies open up and the pipes are clogged (as well as neighbours dealing with construction runoff, as the picture shows), but that may be but a taste of the torrent to come.

“The homes along One Mile Creek will see all of this accumulated volume of water eventually report to their backyards when the batch discharge permit runs out upon completion of construction some time in 2028. The town will have to grapple with this eventuality and answer to the homeowners along One Mile Creek, 94 homes in total.”

Nobody on council seems bothered by this. There is no plan. There are no flow gauges in place. And the locals have found their government won’t even release documents allowing us all to understand what’s been approved. And, what’s coming.

It took a freedom of information request and several months before Niagara Region agreed to make the Parliament Oak dewatering permit public. Meanwhile, NOTL staff had a copy — but wouldn’t hand it over. And the master dewatering plan for the four-acre Parliament Oak hotel complex, tabled last November, has never seen the light of day.

Imagine: public documents required for political approval by elected people of a major development in the heart of the community that we can’t see. All presided over by a lord mayor who just lectured others on “protecting local democracy.” Seriously.

“This pumping into the sanitary sewer issue is going to continue for at least two more years,” says Simkus. “When the hotel opens and injects sewage from 129 guest rooms, restaurants, banquet halls and cleaning, the batch injection of groundwater and stormwater has to stop.”

If there was flow data available, we’d know what was coming.

But all we know for sure is the election date.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca