From Jim Stanley, Willowbrook Water Committee
Opening the culvert on roadway a huge help says Stanley:
I had made a phone call to Jeff Wiseman of the MOTI asking him to give myself and another resident permission to remove the pavement from Meyers rd surface, which he approved . We proceeded to do this Thursday March 29th by hand to pick away at the cracked pavement.


It released the flow of water within about 15 minutes to start dropping water level drastically.
 
MOTI provided the subdivision with “Road closure” signs as this road will be out of service for a few months. The Willowbrook water advisory committee held a meeting the evening of March 29th to go over plans of what should be next in the prevention of our homes flooding. At this meeting we received confirmation that we were receiving a large pump to be placed at the West end of Carr to remove standing water from the “bowl”. I believe this has worked tremendously. We have been able to have Kearns Creek run through its original course, within the banks of the creek itself. Many members of the community plus WVFD members realigned the sandbags much tighter to the creek banks to keep the flow in the creek !
I understand MOTI provided a excavation machine to finally dig out the 20 inch culvert at Meyers Rd to improve upon the flow of water leaving Willowbrook subdivision. Big help, plus the installation of the pump at Carr Crescent, the two coupled together has possibly, but only “possibly” saved our homes from flooding.
I’ve emailed a couple of residents while I’ve been away and I don’t think any water has hit the basement floors yet, crossing my fingers. I’ll know more once I’m home.
Just have to mention though, MOTI has come to the table in the dying moments, to allow this work to help alleviate Willowbrook’s state of emergency. RDOS having a consulting Hydrologist on site to assess the situation and advise the next moves. It’s just really really disappointing that our government entities weren’t able to respond to our requests sooner, back in September/October of 2017 when our community was faced with a proactive remedy rather than what we’ve been doing for the past 6 – 8 days. Reacting!
It’s tiring and something that could have been avoided if we had just received a little help and instruction about 5-6 months ago. I personally contacted Argo , MOTI , RDOS , and the Ministry of Forests and Lands , after our last flood in 2017. I was told by each department that it wasn’t their “jurisdiction “ and they would pass me onto another entity. Then I was told that the culverts were fine and not a problem. I pushed for a Hydrologist and we had one appointed by the Ministry. We never were privy to that report and our requests for actions so that this wouldn’t happen in 2018 , were ignored. We will still need to have government involvement to conclude the remedy of new culverts in all “5” locations, I’m including Goldtau rd, which needs major attention to have the creek flow correctly and in the proper channel.
Meyers Flats needs to be excavated to re establish the creek bed to provide the original course. The Dam needs to be dealt with in my mind right now, while we have it at a low level. I’ve heard they may use this area as a buffer zone to handle extra water during the freshet, but I disagree. The dam is unstable,!, if the water rises too high in it, it could rupture so I don’t want to see it  “full“ again. If it’s empty, then let’s have a contractor up there to remove it and when the spring freshet starts we can monitor the flow daily rather than having this large amount of water sitting there on the verge of removing the dam and wiping out Willowbrook in it path.