Flooding in Saskatchewan and Manitoba has thrown disaster back into the headlines and put dangerous weather on a lot of people's minds.
But for Dana Soong, thinking about bad storms year-round is a big part of his job. As an engineer and manager of utility programs for the City of Coquitlam, Soong is tasked with ensuring that the city's sewer and stormwater system is up to surviving even the heaviest of seasonal downpours so that homeowners don't find themselves knee-deep in unwanted water in their basements.
It's no easy job in this age of global climate change.
Water damage caused by system backups has now surpassed home fires as the most costly insurance claim in the country, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Insurable losses topped the $3 billion mark in 2013 for the first time in Canadian history. Over half that total, $1.7 billion, was related to water damage resulting from record flooding in Calgary and across southern Alberta in June 2013. In all, 28,000 claims, averaging $61,000 each, were filed.
Just weeks later, in July, Toronto's infrastructure was swamped by 126 millimetres of rain that fell in a single day, resulting in 29,000 claims totalling about $850 million.
Water backups can be caused by any number of circumstances – from overgrown tree roots and defective pipes to homeowners pouring grease down the line and plugging it up (true story, said Soong).
But it's the rain that really sets the trouble off. Extreme rainfalls can easily overwhelm infrastructure, sending waste and water back up into homes and onto roadways.
If anything, it's a problem that is only getting worse over time as weather patterns change and become unstable.
“What climate change is doing is giving us more extreme storms, more extreme rainfall events,” Soong said.
Tracy Kyle, Coquitlam's manager of environmental services, notes that residents can do their part to mitigate climate change. “Fifty per cent of Coquitlam's [greenhouse gas emissions] come from transportation,” she noted. “With the Evergreen Line opening in 2016 in Coquitlam, we hope that residents start to use transit for their daily commute to work.”
Climate change, and, notably, the impact of extreme weather on insurance rates, is such a concern it takes up two spots on a list of four strategic priorities highlighted by the national insurance bureau.
Insurable losses related to water and wind damage in 2013 were more than 40 times the amount recorded in 1983, according to bureau data.
And that's not counting all the other crazy weather events across the country in recent years, from a Category 5 tornado (the worst ever in Canada) outside of Winnipeg to the ice storm that downed trees and cut power to hundreds of thousands residents across southern Ontario this past Christmas.
Not to mention the hurricanes, hail, landslides, wildfires and the increasing threat of overland flooding from rising sea levels. (Experts predict sea levels will rise about one metre over the next 100 years.)
“What we are seeing is, every year, billions of dollars in catastrophic losses,” said Robert Tremblay, the insurance bureau's director of research.
“An extreme weather event that would occur every 50 years is now happening once every five to seven years, depending on where you are in the country,” he said.
The country's rapid rate of urbanization has only served to magnify the problem. When disaster strikes a dense urban centre, costs can quickly soar, and the existing infrastructure in many cities is old and ill equipped to deal with environmental extremes.
By comparison, British Columbia has largely escaped major losses associated with severe-weather events. The rainy reputation of the West Coast, in particular, has spared many of its residents from water damage on the levels we've seen elsewhere because urban drainage systems were built from the outset to withstand a higher level of rain intensity.
But, cautioned Tremblay, no one is immune from the effects of climate change. “If it rained more in the past, it is going to rain more in the future,” Tremblay said.
Policy-makers across the Metro Vancouver region have been working in recent years to lower the risk of overland flooding by beefing up regulations for waterfront developments.
Overland flooding is not covered by insurance in Canada – a reality thousands of Albertans found out after losing property, in some cases whole houses, by overflowing creeks and rivers in the 2013 flood. Indeed, the magnitude of the Alberta disaster was so great it had insurers considering some dire steps, from eliminating all flood coverage across the country to hiking premiums to the point where insurance is no longer affordable.
“It has not been a pretty time, as the numbers suggest, for the property line in our business,” insurance bureau CEO Don Forgeron told business and government leaders at a meeting last year in Toronto.
Assessing municipal risk
The insurance bureau has, instead, pinned its hopes on an innovative new software program specifically designed to help cities better plan for and guard against flooding caused by severe weather.
The Municipal Risk Assessment Tool (MRAT), which is still being fine-tuned, is currently being tested in three pilot cities, including Coquitlam, Hamilton, Ontario, and Fredericton, New Brunswick. The initiative, developed by the insurance bureau with the aid of federal funding, uses different climate models, past rainfall events and municipal data to predict areas of the city that are particularly vulnerable to flooding caused by storm-related backups.
Tremblay called the MRAT the “most advanced analytical tool of its kind that currently exists.”
Soong is the MRAT technical expert in Coquitlam, where sewer backups are common, resulting in dozens of complaints every year from unhappy citizens in this fast-growing city of 126,000.
And while it may be blue skies today, Soong knows there will be plenty more rainy days ahead.
When that day comes, he wants the city to be as prepared as possible.
“This tool will help us,” he said.
To mitigate the effects of climate change, there are several things that B.C. residents can do.
- Thirty-seven per cent of British Columbia's greenhouse gas (GHC) emissions come from on-road transportation. Reducing driving time (by riding your bike or using public transit) is one of the most relevant ways to help climate change.
- Residents could consider downsizing to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Forty-two per cent of transportation emissions derive from SUVs and light truck vehicle use.
- Half of all GHG emissions derive from building energy usage. Using energy-efficient equipment, as well as adjusting our expectations for indoor temperatures, can reduce household and building GHGs.
- Reducing waste can help to reduce GHGs. All residents should be encouraged to reuse, recycle and divert waste from our landfills as much as possible.
Source: Tracy Kyle, manager of environmental services, City of Coquitlam
