Officials with the City of Windsor are imploring residents to take advantage of free city programs to reduce the risk flooding.
In fact, one of those voluntary programs could become mandatory in the future.
For the past decade, the city has been offering a voluntary downspout disconnection program where residents could call 3-1-1 and city crews would go to the person's home to do the work for free.
But a report will go to city council in the next month or so, to look at possibly creating a by-law to allow crews to go onto private property to do the work.
The program is designed to alleviate pressure on the system in the event of a heavy rainstorm, but mayor Drew Dilkens points out that not enough people have taken advantage of it.
"We have offered this for the better part of a decade and we have only had 10% uptake in the system and the fact of the matter is, most property owners if they don't see there is a problem with their own property, many are unlikely to take a positive action if they don't experience the difficulties themselves," says Dilkens.
Windsor Engineer Mark Winterton says the mandatory downspout disconnection program would likely be a pilot project in certain areas of concern.
"We would come in, do a street at a time, monitor it, find the effectiveness of that, look at the strategic locations that we can to maximize the value of disconnecting downspouts," he says.
Winterton adds it will be a matter of council approving it, and allocating money towards it in the budget.
Another free program is Windsor Alerts and so far 5,000 residents have signed up which would send emergency notifications to someone's email or cell phone.
Officials provided a flood risk update Tuesday afternoon where Windsor Fire Chief Stephen Laforet noted water levels are six inches higher now in Lake St. Clair, compared to this time last year — it is also 34 inches higher than the average April.
The city has sent out 17,000 flyers to homeowners to warn them about the risks of flooding due to high water levels.
Back in August 2017, more than 6,000 homes flooded in Windsor due to heavy rains.