It’s amazing that such a thing doesn’t already exist.
It doesn’t sound very dramatic or interesting on the face of it — it actually sounds bureaucratic as heck — but the fact that the Cowichan Valley Regional District doesn’t have a good handle on stormwater and drainage in its electoral areas is a potentially massive problem with serious implications.
Think landslides and mudslides onto roads and potentially even homes. Think flooding after rain events like we experienced in Cowichan in November 2021. It’s all informed by how the water travels in, around and through our communities.
Allenby Road has been closed for months and there’s no indication when it will reopen after a landslide buried the road during the November flooding. Now any reopening has to wait on an evaluation of how stable the bank above the road is. Indian Road, in the same area, was also closed temporarily due to a landslide in January. Water flow and saturation is a likely culprit in both cases.
Getting a report from staff about where problem areas may lie, and who is responsible to ensure people, roads and structures are kept safe is important. There’s a jurisdictional issue, you see, as the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure is responsible for drainage from roads in electoral areas, including maintaining such things as culverts, which can become clogged with debris and plant life very quickly if not cleaned regularly.
The man who has brought this matter to light is Ali Falsafi from Cowichan Bay, who posed for a photo for the Citizen at a spot where a landslide occurred on Cowichan Bay Road. He deserves a lot of credit for bringing this problem to the forefront.
CVRD water manager Brian Dennison brought up an interesting point during discussion on the topic: there are also big implications for potential developments and approvals thereof. He mentioned specifically hearing from residents who have lived in their homes for many years, but have complained of problems with water following more homes being built around them. We would suppose this is particularly true when developments are made uphill from existing neighbourhoods.
This tells us drainage and stormwater is clearly something that needs more in-depth consideration when development approvals are sought and given. Solving a problem before it becomes one is clearly the better path.