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Shoreline fixes coming to Harris Park won’t prevent floods like the one that happened last week after near-record rain left the downtown-area greenspace and its walkways submerged.
The Harris Park shoreline restoration project, instead, will replace old erosion prevention measures with naturalized infrastructure to “protect the shoreline into the future,” city hall officials say.
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While the project will repair erosion caused by previous flooding, it’s not designed to stop floods that can paralyze Harris Park and prevent its use for individuals or even big events,
“The Harris Park restoration is not going to be preventing any flooding,” Ward 13 Coun. David Ferreira, who represents the area, said, noting the park, located on a floodplain, floods every year.
Glenn McGillivray runs a Western University-linked research centre for disaster prevention. He says it’s well understood that Harris Park and others, such as Gibbons Park, will flood at least once a year. One solution, he says, is making them “more resilient” to floods by “making room for the river.”
Amid climate change, he notes, Londoners should expect “more and larger” heavy rainstorms that can lead to an “overwhelming of the system.”
The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority controls the flow of water through the region. The recent heavy flooding was beyond their control, spokesperson Eleanor Heagy said, noting the organization handles the flow of water up to the Fanshawe Dam, and heavy rains Monday and Tuesday fell below that point.
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Heagy cited climate change, too – noting as summer storms become more extreme, they also become “very hard” to predict.
“We don’t know when they’re coming,” she said, noting that last week’s rainfall also caught Environment Canada off-guard. “It’s their job to know these things and to see these things. But climate change is adding a whole new level of uncertainty to this.”
Restoration work at Harris Park is expected to proceed as planned later this month, city hall officials say. Construction is anticipated to last until December, with final restoration work expected to occur next spring.
nbrennan@postmedia.com
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