Town met flash- flooding head on

Ken Johnston
Editor

Four councillors, the clerk and the mayor met Monday and the topic of discussion was the rain.
Councillor Brent Anderson wanted the public to know that the town is reacting as quickly as they can given the huge volume of water the area has received all at once.
In fact the water came down in some places at a rate of 1-3” per hour. The government dock at the base of Main Street saw the Rainy River rise by about three feet from morning to night.
Mayor Gord Prost pointed out that the sewer problem Rainy River was having Monday with too much inflow was not unique to Rainy River. “I heard from Warroad all down the line people are having problems.”
Councillor Dennis Ewald said that he heard Fort Frances was having problems to.
“We could have had a state of the art sewer system and there would still have been nothing we could do.”
When the system overloads the lift station, the town pumps raw sewage into the river at the base of 6th St.
Two citizens asked Clerk Bowman to report why they felt they were having problems with flooding in their neighbourhoods.
Ken Moore said that the hospital pumping its basement out into the ditch is causing problems for him.
Fred Hartnell said that the problems for residents in his area stem from the grates over the culverts on Highway 11. He said they clog up with debris and cause water to back up.
Councillor Glen Armstrong said that he feels the culverts under the road at his corner are too small.
Clerk Bowman said that many people have been asking for bigger culverts.
The mayor said there was simply too much rain, too quickly for the system to handle.
Other water issues were brought up at the meeting with the Mayor reporting to council that he travelled to Ottawa last week to meet along with other NWO Mayors and federal ministers. Prost said that the consensus from the mayors is that the current rules governing funding of sewer and water systems in communities are not flexible enough.

Councillor Glen Armstrong questioned why the town paid Burnside Consulting nearly $10,000 last month.
Town Clerk Deb Bowman reported that consultants are expensive and that they had been hired by council to convince the government that the town of Rainy River does not need two water treatment systems.

Mayor Prost said that it looks like the efforts of Burnside are starting to payoff and that the government is backing off forcing the town to spend $500,000 on a second system.
Other Business
•Council passed a motion to give the clerk and mayor the authority to sign a letter of intent to enter into a one year contract with Dr. Singleton to provide services in Rainy River.
•Council passed a bylaw to close Main Street off during Railroad Daze.
•Council passed a motion to support a resolution from Halton Hills requesting the province create uniform smoking regulations for the entire province.
•Council also appointed Councillor Gerry Marchuk to sit on a Rainy River District Municipal Association committee to try and develop uniform guidelines for dealing with smoking in the workplace.
•Council agreed to extend the fire protection agreement with Dawson Twp. for a period of no less than six months. Dawson had requested an extension from June 30, 2002 to Sept. 30, 2002 while they work on getting their own fire dept. up to snuff.