I am shocked anyone would take this article seriously in any way shape or form. It's utter rubbish from the first paragraphs...
'Bolsheviks', 'The Union of Soviet Toronto Republics', 'politbiuro', and the author loses all creditability.
The water collections systems in Toronto, and everywhere, are out of date, falling apart, and causing many issues. Toronto itself has been undergoing a complete program of their basement flooding remediation. They're currently building new tunnels to collect additional water and being able to handle the capacity.
The problem isn't the lack of maintenance (which it is), it's the fact that residents, businesses, and everyone is paving over their properties in order to gain more driveway / patio / recreational space / larger square footage houses / etc.
Previously, the soil would naturally soak up the rainwater to the point of saturation, and whatever was left over would make it's way over to the sewer system...not any more. Now these impermeable structures don't allow for this, and the water has to go somewhere. There's less green space to absorb the water, so there is more water making it into the system.
Said water bring with it: grime, garbage, oil, and a host of other contaminants into our aging infrastructure causing further damage and as others mentioned, overflowing the system and discharging unsanitary conditions into the lake and our waterways.
Mississauga has a 'levy' / 'tax' or call it what you will that gets tacked onto the water bill because the system can no longer sustain itself.
The people of Toronto will not accept higher property taxes to pay for these much needed repairs, so the politicians need to add various different streams of income to bring it in, or cut elsewhere to make up the shortfall.
Imagine (for fun / exercise) a 3000sqft yard with a 1000sqft home...that leaves 2000sqft of green space.
Add a 2500sqft home onto the yard, with a 500sqft driveway, and you have no green space left (I've seen it) on a single yard.
Where is the water going? It's sure as hell not being soaked up into the lawn...there isn't one! So it ALL goes into the water system.
Who pays for that? It should be the person that has caused this, and it was allowed to be done by Toronto that approved said permits.
When new major buildings / infrastructure is being built...I was shocked to learn how much of an issue the water runoff is. There's massive holding / drainage ponds that need to be build to make up for that shortfall. Now what would take hours to soak into the ground can take days because it's all collected in a central location to allow it. Drive around some areas and you'll see fenced off ponds that have no business being there...those are collection ponds to take all the rain / surface water from developments and allow it to drain and get soaked up into the water, or evaporated into the atmosphere.
It's a huge problem, and something needs to be done as we're literally 'paving paradise and putting up a parking lot'.
IMO this is very much needed, and long overdue. Just a matter of how they charge for it fairly.
