From: Michelle Weisheit, chair – Willowbrook Water Committee
What a day mixed with emotions yesterday was. After more letter writing, phone calls, begging and pleading the west Carr cres culvert was removed. Residents were happy believing that this might help our dire situation.
Our sense of euphoria was very quickly snubbed out. Within 30 minutes we learned not only that the pump was being moved to Pringle dam to pump more water in our subdivision but also that St Andrews was given the order to draw down their lake.
A few hours later I drove passed St Andrews and granted there is a lot of water but are there any houses at risk?  Is someone’s home about to be flooded?  Is a family about to be displaced and be left homeless?  It did not appear that way.
So is this a case of Willowbrook residents sacrificing our homes for a game of golf?  Haven’t we “paid” enough already. Our community looks like a war zone. An estimate of 20,000 sand bags lining the creek, 2 culverts removed and hoses crisscrossing the landscape. The constant sound of pumps running in the background.
When do we become a priority?  We’ve been lobbying the powers that be to take care of our situation since we were flooded last year, to no avail.  So now we find ourselves at the bottom of the priority list in a completely avoidable situation.  Had Ministry of Transportation increased culvert size to the adequate capacity this situation could have been circumvented.  Now due to no fault of ours we have become the Willowbrook dam.  Catching water to save a golf course and keeping it here in order to spare downstream flooding.  It hardly seems fair that one community has to sacrifice so much again and again and still our pleas continue to fall on deaf ears.