The federal government has announced $3.6 million to help the Town of Tecumseh upgrade its sanitary sewage infrastructure.
Windsor-Tecumseh Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk announced the funding from the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund during a news conference Wednesday in Tecumseh.
The money will help the town pay for a near $9 million project to reconstruct and upgrade the Cedarwood Sanitary Pump Station on Gauthier Drive, near Little River Boulevard, which was built in 1972.
The goal of the new sewage pumping station is to help prevent basement flooding while also providing more capacity to support increased housing development in the community.
Tecumseh Mayor Gary McNamara says that not only will this help bring the equipment and technology to 2024 and beyond, it will also increase capacity to meet the grwoth.
"The worst impact for any resident is when we flood our basements with raw sewage. This pumping station here is going to have a capacity upgrade and also some holding power so that we can mitigate the surcharge of sanitary sewers going back up into the homes," he says.
On Sept. 30, 2016, a strong and slow-moving storm system moved across Windsor and Tecumseh, resulting in more than 1,600 homes being flooded.
Tecumseh alone received up to 195 mm of rain, more than twice its entire monthly average.
Then on Aug. 28 and into Aug. 29, 2017, 150 to 200 mm of rain fell across Tecumseh in less than 48 hours, resulting in more homes being impacted by flooding.
McNamara says everything in the town flows to the Cedarwood Sanitary Pump Station, something that was identified in the most recent flood mapping.
"This is very low in this region. A little bit further down toward the lake, everything migrates to this area before it's pumped to the sewage treatment plant. So it is a vulnerable area," he says.
"When you start factoring in climate change and the location of this pump station, which is in the flood hazard zone of Lake St. Clair, it is low and susceptible to flooding," he says.
The goal is to have the design and approvals for the new pumping station go before town council in 2025, but construction is not expected to begin until 2027-2028.
In 2018, the federal government launched the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF), committing $2 billion over 10 years to invest in structural and natural infrastructure projects to increase the resilience of communities that are impacted by natural disasters triggered by climate change.
The government provides funding to cover 40 percent of a project's cost, while a municipality would pay for the other 60 percent.
The DMAF program involves support for a series of projects, including studies, environmental assessments, road works, sewer works, stormwater management works, and pumping station works to address areas prone to flooding, drainage complications, and overall storm sewer capacity issues.
