City of Regina continues to clean up following Friday’s rainstorm

Submerged cars, flooded underpasses and overwhelmed drains were just some of the things the City of Regina had to deal with during last Friday’s major rainstorm.

That morning, 50 to 75 millimetres of rain fell in just two hours.

Several rescues were performed, including two at the underpasses at Albert Street and Broad Street.

There have been a few projects in the city over the last few years in the hopes of preventing such flooding, but the success is determined by how fierce the rain comes down.

“The city’s underground sewer system is not designed to handle that much rain in a short amount of time and further investments are needed,” Kim Onrait, the city’s executive director of citizen services, explained during a media conference Wednesday.

“We are currently working on a stormwater project in the North Central community to help prevent flooding during large storms and reduce the risk of basement and street flooding. This will impact 450 homes within this neighbourhood, which is a cost of $15 million over three years and is currently underway.

“We have also invested over $200 million into the wastewater treatment plant and the McCarthy Boulevard pumping station in recent years. This resulted in avoiding wastewater bypasses during this storm.”

Even though those projects are new, Onrait admitted there is 25-year plan to continually improve the system and that includes some of the problem underpasses.

“The city is investigating ways to reduce the amount of stormwater that accumulates in the underpass at Albert Street,” said Kurtis Doney, the city’s director of water, waste and environment.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure in the area and not a lot of land available to store that stormwater. However, we are looking at options and ensuring the upgrades are integrated with other upgrades in the water.”

On Friday, in order to keep the drains flowing during the storm, about five megalitres of wastewater was diverted to Wascana Creek, which represents about one to two per cent of the total wastewater Regina produced that day.

It was in diluted form and, with the amount of stormwater flowing in the creek at the time, it isn’t thought to have caused any environmental damage.

There were about 300 service requests to the Services Regina call centres during the storm, dealing with everything from water and sewer issues to problems related to trees and branches.

Primarily, southeast and southwest Regina along with the Westhill neighbourhood were the areas most impacted by the storm.

With private insurance covering a lot of the damage, the City of Regina is unable to say how much the storm may have cost.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Britton Gray