Dear Community,
I want to thank the community for coming together again during this difficult time. Both Wednesday and Thursday brought large amounts of rain and windy weather into our area. Our drains and sewers are slowly receding, but it is still going to take time for the water to drain away. Our public works, community services and drainage departments have been out day and night checking drains and pumping stations, removing debris, setting up barricades etc. Several large trees came down and the power went out Wednesday night in Harrow and Colchester. Thank you to Hydro One and ELK for getting us back up and running as soon as possible. The outage was caused by an issue on the transmission line that feeds Kingsville TS and Belle River TS, the 115kV Hydro One transmission line was taken out of service, but fortunately they were able to restore it rather quickly. All areas of our municipality were impacted but McGregor, Harrow and Colchester seemed to get the most water. Our town staff checked with Amherstburg to ensure their systems were running for our McGregor folks who feed into them. Our CAO has contacted the Ministry to inquire about Disaster Recovery Assistance Program. We are looking to work with GFL for extra garbage pickups.
Today I talked to several staff about how we can better position Essex going forward to mitigate extreme weather events. It is important to note the intense rain we got in a short period of time. The reality is enlarging municipal drains is a very complex process and something that does not change overnight. Our systems are built for a 1 in 2-year storm and what we had was closer to a 1 in 100-year storm. We are brainstorming this week on emergency preparedness and future infrastructure changes. This is the third storm since February and we are doing everything we can within our means to help people. We are going to revisit sandbags and basement flood prevention subsidies. I will take any suggestions you have via email to mayorsoffice@essex.ca . Going forward to reach me please use email as I cannot provide good customer service via facebook messanger.
When it floods please try to refrain from using large amounts of water inside your home, showering and washing laundry should be limited. Please do not let your children or pets play in the flood water as we cannot guarantee that sanitary sewage has not mixed into storm water.
To those who flooded I am truly sorry and sympathize with you and your families.
