Back to Basics. Existing Homes First.
We cannot change the weather. We can change how prepared this ward is.
At the airport on July 1, about double the previous record
At Britannia in about five hours
Flood-related service requests in Ward 9 by July 10
Residents who lost power
Record Rain. Real Damage.
Canada Day 2026 was not only a rainfall record. It was record rain, a storm concentrated on the west end, drainage that could not keep up, closed roads, flooded basements and a widespread power outage, arriving together. The airport recorded 118.4 mm, about double the previous July 1 record. Britannia recorded 167 mm in about five hours, Colonnade 151 mm and Nepean 144 mm. The City has described the Britannia reading as beyond a 1-in-200-year event. More than 30,000 residents lost power.
Knoxdale-Merivale was one of the three hardest-hit wards. As of the morning of July 10 the City had logged 684 flood-related service requests in Ward 9. With Bay and College, this ward accounted for about 83 percent of those requests. City-wide, basement-flood reports later approached 7,000. Ottawa Fire Services answered more than 700 storm calls across the city, including electrical hazards and downed wires. In this ward the weak spots were the ones residents already know: Craig Henry, Tanglewood, General Burns, and Graham Creek in Trend-Arlington, where the creek overran its culverts. Heavy rain returned on August 10. It was a smaller storm. It was not a reason to wait.
City staff have already said this storm exposed weaknesses in the stormwater system. A ward councillor cannot replace that system alone. What a councillor can do is force a public review, turn it into a funded list, and get practical help onto the streets that have already flooded before the next July. Priority is the order of the work, not a blank cheque.
“The City already knows the weak pipes, the blocked culverts and the homes that have flooded before. I will put those projects ahead of new towers, and get pumps and rebate help onto those streets before I spend a term designing a new department.”
The Glen Cairn Standard
Glen Cairn is the local proof that a flooded neighbourhood can be treated as a program, not a complaint. After repeated flooding, including a July 2009 storm that damaged about 1,200 homes, most of them in Glen Cairn, the City delivered more than 30 flood-mitigation projects, exceeding $35 million, and finished nearly a year ahead of schedule. The failure before that was a report, after the 2002 flood, that sat unused.
That is the standard I will apply here. Not another study for the shelf. An independent review, done by an engineer who does not report to the division that built the system, with one product: a public, ranked, costed list, and a funding path, on a deadline. Glen Cairn’s lesson is the delivery.
ARE YOU WITH ME?
Six Commitments for Ward 9
An independent Ward 9 infrastructure review
If elected, I will move for that review in the first months of the term. It covers the streets that flooded, not the whole city in general.
- A block-by-block capacity assessment of storm sewers in Craig Henry, Tanglewood, General Burns, Trend-Arlington and the other streets that ponded or flooded.
- Known bottlenecks named, including Graham Creek culverts, grates and inlets, undersized pipes, missing catch basins, and ditches that no longer carry what they were built for.
- Hydraulic modelling of the flood-affected watersheds, held to the review Council already ordered on July 15, not announced again as if that work does not exist. The new piece is independence, a deadline, and a public map.
- A ranked project list with costs, published, with annual progress reporting. The Glen Cairn test is whether the list is funded and built, not whether it is written.
Before the next storm season
This is the work that does not wait for the review to finish. It does not require a new agency.
- Clear the pinch points we already know. Run a camera through the pipes — CCTV here means a sewer inspection camera, not a security camera — then clean and repair Graham Creek culverts, grates and inlets, and the catch basins on streets that ponded. The work is the structures that blocked, not a general dredge of the creek.
- Install additional catch basins on streets that pond repeatedly, where the review or the existing maintenance record already shows the inlet is the failure, not the downstream pipe.
- Stage the equipment when the warning is issued, not after the first basement call. Flood-response staging in Craig Henry, Tanglewood, General Burns and Trend-Arlington. Mobile pumps, generators, sandbags, portable barriers and emergency signage, stocked before the season and moved when Environment Canada issues a severe-rainfall warning.
- Press for command staff to be identified in advance. Public Works can pre-position pumps. Fire, Hydro Ottawa and Police command, and mutual-aid surge capacity with neighbouring municipalities, are agency decisions. I will ask that those arrangements be confirmed before storm season, not negotiated during one. I will not claim I can sign them.
The point of staging is practical: faster reopening of closed roads, less strain on crews who would otherwise arrive late, and quicker protection of water facilities, transit routes and electrical substations. Those are the results to measure. They are not a guarantee.
A Ward 9 flood-mitigation program
Designate Craig Henry, Tanglewood, General Burns and the Graham Creek corridor as priority flood-mitigation zones, and build the program around the independent list.
- Prioritize undersized pipes for replacement, and increase conveyance at the bottlenecks the review ranks. Full pipe upsizing of a 1960s suburb is a multi-year capital program. It gets done in the order the review sets, not as a promise that every street is rebuilt in one term.
- Publish a flood-risk map from the City’s own 3-1-1 reports and the review, street by street, and update it as projects finish. Residents should not have to wait for a consultant to see where the water went.
- Annual progress reporting on every project on the list: funded, tendered, built, or slipped, and why.
- No new upstream intensification on a street whose storm sewer cannot carry the rain we have already seen, until the upgrade is funded. Not promised. Not phased in later. Funded. The Official Plan already says growth is phased to match infrastructure. I will hold every Ward 9 application to that rule, and I will require the capacity gap to be written into the planning report before the vote.
Residential flood protection, taken to the door
Many basements took water because the public system was overloaded and the water came onto private property. The programs to help already exist. They were not in front of the homes that needed them.
- Simplify access to the Residential Protective Plumbing Program, and expand funding for backwater valves and sump pumps. After July 1 the City received 100 protective-plumbing applications and more than 2,800 compassionate-grant applications. Before the storm, the City’s flood-grant program had reached about 55 households in 16 years.
- Target every home with a previous flood report. My office will contact those households and walk the owner through both programs. Outreach is a ward-office job. It should not wait for a city-wide campaign.
- Pay for the expansion from money already in the system first: the stormwater charge residents already pay, and capital dollars that are not serving flooded streets. This is not a reason for a new tax, and it cannot be paid for by promising a lower tax bill. A levy is worth discussing only after that accounting, and only if it is locked to the published list. Not a general tax with a new name.
Hyper-local alerts
I will ask Council to integrate the rain gauges, weather radar, sewer monitors and creek-level sensors the City already owns into one operational picture, and to send geo-targeted alerts to the neighbourhoods in the path of a storm. When a rainfall threshold is crossed, the pre-set response should already be written down: where the pumps go, which roads close, who is called. A public street-level map should show the same picture residents are being warned about.
I will not put a number of minutes on that warning. On July 1 a large share of the rain fell in a few hours. The target is earlier notice than residents had, and crews already moving when the warning is issued, so fewer vehicles are left on flooded roads. The commitment is the alert and the staging.
Maintenance before the next failure
The long argument is simple. Stop waiting for the pipe to fail.
- A preventive inspection schedule for storm sewers, culverts and catch basins in the priority zones, using CCTV and condition-based maintenance, not a complaint-driven clean-out after the basement is already wet.
- A larger annual maintenance budget for drainage in mature neighbourhoods, funded first from existing stormwater revenue. Renewal of 1960s pipes and ditches comes before further intensification on the streets those pipes serve.
- Critical infrastructure on the same list: the access routes to water facilities, transit corridors and electrical substations in the ward, so a closed road is not also a closed response.
The Order of the Work
The goal is to reduce the chance of a repeat before next summer, and to have a funded program underway in this term. The sequence is:
Before the next storm: clear known culverts and catch basins, stage pumps and barriers, knock on doors that have already flooded.
Independent review, on the Glen Cairn model: a public, ranked, costed list, with a deadline. Not a report that sits.
The Ward 9 program: priority zones, a public flood-risk map, annual reporting, and pipe and conveyance upgrades in the order the review ranks them.
Residential retrofits, paid for first from the stormwater charge and capital dollars already in the system.
Hyper-local alerts and pre-set responses, built on sensors the City already owns.
Preventive maintenance, and no new upstream intensification until the pipe is funded.
That combination deals with the immediate vulnerability in Craig Henry, Tanglewood, General Burns and along Graham Creek, and it builds the longer program those streets have not had. Glen Cairn showed what a funded list can do. Ward 9 should not have to flood again to get one.
Figures Used Here
Ward 9, morning of July 10: 684 flood-related service requests. Bay had 1,512 that morning and College 2,282. Those are service requests, not a final basement count, and the 1,512 is not a Knoxdale-Merivale number. City-wide basement-flood reports later approached 7,000. The more than 700 Fire Services calls for electrical hazards, downed wires and other storm emergencies are a city-wide total. Glen Cairn: more than 30 flood-mitigation projects, exceeding $35 million, reported complete in November 2016, nearly a year ahead of schedule.
Sources
- City of Ottawa, Infrastructure and Water Services memo, Tammy Rose, July 11, 2026, Table 2.
- Ottawa City Council, July 15, 2026, Motions 2026-83-09 and 2026-83-06.
- City news release, July 15, 2026.
- Emergency and Protective Services memo, Pierre Poirier for Ryan Perrault, August 14, 2026.
- Environment Canada rainfall as reported by the City.
- CityNews, November 30, 2016, on the Kanata flood-mitigation program.
Anna Ielo-Tal · Candidate for City Councillor, Ward 9, Knoxdale-Merivale. This note is for residents and for the campaign. It is not a City of Ottawa document. Election day is October 26, 2026.
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