By Spencer Sterritt

Inaction on flooding issues frustrates Green Lake home owners

Jan 24, 2018 | 10:02 PM

NANAIMO — “I just fail to understand why we have to put up with this,” frustrated homeowner Clark Cunningham says as he looks out at his flooded yard.

For most of the year, Cunningham says Green Lake significantly floods his and the neighbours’ lake-facing backyards, rendering them unusable.

“I fully expected there to be minor flooding on occasion with rainstorms,” he said. “But for there to be standing water on 50 per cent of my property for eight months of the year is ridiculous.”

The issue, Clark said, is beaver dams blocked the outflow creek for the lake, which then backs up onto his property and washes away the gardens he and his family worked hard to build. “It’s one of the reasons I purchased the home, because it had a nice big garden area.”

It’s a problem he said he’s taken to both the City of Nanaimo and the B.C. government and gotten nowhere.

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The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development told NanaimoNewsNOW the area is on land owned by the City, so if the city believed a beaver dam was causing the flooding it would be up to the municipality to hire a trapper.

Dean Mousseau, manager of engineering and environment with the City, told NanaimoNewsNOW the lake is privately owned, the outflow creek falls under provincial jurisdiction and also cuts across a private residence, effectively hampering their ability to do anything.

“At this point, the City doesn’t really have the authority to enter private property without the property owner’s permission to do any work. So at this point, the City doesn’t have any options with regards to maintaining the water level of the lake,” he said.

A baffle, which is a large pipe that cuts through a beaver dam and opens up far away from the dam, was recommended by Clark, but the City said it wouldn’t be as effective a solution as expected.

Mousseau said it would be quite difficult to manage and “overtime the beavers will plug it and we’ll be right back to the same situation we’re at now.”

He said the City’s foreman of drainage was assessing the situation on Tuesday.

Neighbours echoed Cunningham’s frustrations, saying the flooding rendered their beautiful lawns unusable.

NanaimoNewsNOW reached out to the owner of the property with the outflow creek, who declined to comment at this time. 

— with files from Ian Holmes

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit