From
the Telegram for June 5, 2014:
Quote:
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The watershed for the Waterford is more stressed every single year — and with major developers still using the cheaper “strip-off-every-piece-of-natural-groundcover” method of subdivision and industrial park construction, we can look forward to even more flood loading on our rivers and wastewater infrastructure.
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The risk of flooding is one of many reasons I disapprove of new developments in the Southlands and the Leary's Brook watershed. Trees can hold a lot more water than grass or asphalt, and I've found new construction in Kenmount Terrace, Kelsey Drive, and Stavanger Drive to be a nightmare of parking lots and wide streets, with minimal vegetation. I haven't been given any reason to expect that Galway would be wildly different. We should all live in terror of the day when development is permitted above the 190 m contour, where shallow bedrock is more likely to exacerbate the increase in runoff. I know enough about hydrology to have approximately zero confidence in the ability of my fellow engineers to design storm-water retention that works as well as the existing, natural vegetation.
It's radical, but I suggest the City of St. John's should limit all future construction to the area north of Pitts Memorial Drive, at least until the Goulds gets a proper sewer system. There are lots of underused commercial and institutional sites within the existing built-up area that could be redeveloped. Pippy Park and the Windsor Lake watershed provide a northern limit to sprawl, and development in Paradise and CBS, unlike development in the Southlands, won't cause any increase in runoff to rivers in St. John's.