Outdated flood maps holding up development in London: City councilors

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City officials and politicians say a lack of accessible flood mapping is adding hurdles to development approval as London is under pressure to hit provincial housing targets.

City councilors voted unanimously Tuesday to endorse a city hall-led service review of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority’s planning department in order to increase efficiency and prevent overlap with the city’s planning department. In addition, politicians want a value-for-money audit of the conservation authority’s floodplain modeling and mapping.

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The latter was the prominent pain point for councillors, who say the lack of publicly available and up-to-date flood mapping is holding up proposed developments while the city and developers conduct their own research into flood risk, and is creating uncertainty about what land to acquire for building.

“We need (this) to be done as we plan our city and also as we plan needed infrastructure… most of the development community needs to have this set as well so they can know where they can plan their future developments,” Steve Lehman, chair of city’s council’s planning and environment committee, said in an interview.

The authority oversees an area of ​​3,430 square kilometers that spans four counties and includes five urban centers: London, Woodstock, Stratford, Ingersoll, and St. Marys. The Upper Thames began updating its late 1980s-era flood maps in 2016 and is still drafting the first phase.

Jenna Allain, manager of environmental planning and regulations at the Upper Thames, said studying 2,000 kilometers of waterways, bridges and culverts requires enormous amounts of data and calculations.

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“So, there’s a lot of field data collection that’s gone into this… to better inform our modeling and mapping and our watershed,” she said. “It’s a large area that we’ve been undertaking this work for.”

The authority only has so many people who have the expertise to carry out the work, Allain said. Couple that with funding challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and directives from both Queen’s Park and Ottawa to factor in changing climate conditions, with little instruction on what they want.

The first phase of the new floodplain map, much of the Thames River from Mitchell and Woodstock to the forks in London, and downstream to Delaware, is under peer review and could be ready within the next two years, Allain said. All of the other tributaries will be released in phases.

City staff, who compiled a report on the service review, estimate the authority has spent $6.9 million on the project, with funding from the province and cities, as well as its own revenues. Staff also recommend having the authority bring in outside consultants to speed up mapping, which other conservation authorities in the province have done.

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“We feel we’re close partners with the city of London and we certainly understand that development pressures and the need for this type of mapping to be updated and publicly available,” Allain said. “It’s certainly a priority for the conservation authority, and I think we are getting really close, but it’s certainly something that takes a lot of time, resources and effort.”

It can’t come soon enough for developers. Mike Wallace, the executive director of the London Development Institute, said Tuesday “it’s a key issue that has to be resolved” working with the city and conservation authority.

The province has set a target for London to build 47,000 homes by 2031 as part of its push to build 1.5 million homes. The city got off to a rocky start last year, hitting just over half of its target of 3,447 new units.

Shawna Chambers, division director of stormwater management for the city, said floodplain mapping is critical to her department, too, saying the city brought in its own consultants to help Upper Thames expedite maps for Mud and Dingman creeks.

Overall, Lehman understands the need to balance time-intensive work with the needs of the public, because employees at city hall face the same pressures. He stressed the city doesn’t want an adversarial relationship with the Upper Thames, and even hinted at the recent joint effort between the city and developers to address housing pressures as a potential path forward from the service review.

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“I’m hoping, with the most important partner to make sure we build a city correctly, we can develop a good collaborative relationship that can help reduce the burden,” he said.

[email protected]

@jackmoulton65

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