Flooding has been a problem in parts of the Sydney area for a number of years, but work begins Monday to try and mitigate the issue.
“It’s been a long five and a half years. It’s tremendous relief to see that,” said resident, Terry Drohan
Drohan. He lost his house in the thanksgiving flood of 2016 and has dealt with many flooding concerns during storms.
“I think the recent floods, where we had four or five in the last month or so, really brought home the seriousness of the issue,” he said
Construction will start Monday on a new berm project, but not everyone is onboard with where it’s taking place.
“We’re worried about the impact on the forest and the impact of people’s experiences on the trails. There are a lot of older trees that are going to be impacted,” said Wayne McKay, member of an advocacy group for the Baille Ard Forest.
His concern is whether the tradeoff, forest loss, verus current flood protection – will be worth it.
“With this project we don’t see the benefit to the community being great enough to actually sacrifice the forest, said McKay.
The city says part of the trails will be closed during the construction period, after which some newly constructed paths will be put in place.
“What it’s designed to do is to hold back the volume of water that would be coming down from the hill area above the wash brook. So the project is essentially a series of berms,” said Christina Lamey, CBRM spokesperson.
There’s no word on when the project will be completed, but the hope is to achieve some sort of balance between residents