Holyrood council closes book on Kennedy Road complaint
By Mark Squibb
Holyrood council last month determined there’s nothing more to be done for a resident who has claimed that ditching is causing flooding onto a Kennedy’s Road property.
Councillor Sadie King moved that the Town not provide any further remediation as staff had reviewed the situation and determined that the ditching completed in the area did not cause problems with drainage or loss of water.
Councillor Bruce King asked if staff had discovered what caused the problem, if it wasn’t the work done by the Town.
“This has been an ongoing issue now for quite some time,” said Mayor Gary Goobie. “It goes back several years. The property owner has made suggestions in the past because there was some water that came down Kennedy’s Lane – which used to be a cart road— that the onus was on the Town to accept responsibility for the water. It goes much deeper, and I would prefer to not get into the details of it right now, but we’re dealing with a lot of issues and the homeowner is arguing that we created the problem. We’ve investigated this over and over and over again, and public works has been heavily involved in this. We’ve done what we’ve possibly can with the ditching and the water coming down, but in that particular case, we had heavy, heavy rainfall, and there was a bit of water that came over the embankment down on their property by their shed. It didn’t seem to go any further than that.”
Goobie added that many properties experienced similar flooding during the same storm.
“We’re being fair and reasonable about this, we’re not making a rash decision, again, this has been an issue that has bene ongoing for the past several years, and we’ve done what remediation we feel necessary to prevent any further water from coming down on that side, but other than that it has been decided that the Town should not accept any further responsibility,” said Goobie, who added the area is susceptible to flooding, and the road has washed out before during heavy rainstorms.