Emotions are running high for residents of Erie Shore Drive.
Chatham-Kent declared a state of emergency last week and residents of about 80 homes on Erie Shore Drive, which acts as a three-kilometre dike, have been told to evacuate the area due to record-high lake levels and the need for emergency repairs.
It’s the second time in six months a state of emergency has been issued for the area because of flooding and erosion concerns.
The municipality has had to undertake precautions this time around because of an increased risk of a dike failure, which would flood thousands of acres of farmland and turn the village of Erieau into an island in a matter of hours.
Thomas Kelly, Chatham-Kent’s General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering, says there was no one specific event that led to the state of emergency.
“First there was the structural issues…cracking, the widening of the cracks, more cracks, followed by the forecast of what’s to come, and the forecast shows elevated lake levels,” Kelly says. “Also we saw degradation of the slope itself, which is support for the dike road.”
Many residents, including Janet Wallace, say they feel they’ve been blind-sided.
“All I learned is the city is trying to get our property,” Wallace says. “They did not give us notice of this, which we should have been given well in advance so we could prepare and get to say what we felt about it before it was done.”
Other residents are worried that while the road is closed, their homes are at greater risk of flood damage and could well be washed away by the time the work on the dike is finished.
Kelly says the municipality fully understands any closure is more than just an inconvenience to residents along Erie Shore Drive, but the work has to be done.
Phase one of the project, which includes emergency repairs to the dike, will take six to eight weeks assuming the weather cooperates.
“If that dike fails, it’s just not the farmland, it’s just not the village of Erieau, it’s the residents of Erie Shore Drive as well that will be severely impacted,” Kelly says. “We just feel it’s the right decision at this time, we’ll try to get it done as quickly as we can and then we’ll assess it again in that six-to-eight weeks time.”
Council will vote tonight on shutting down the affected section of Erie Shore Drive, effective March 9th, after which point repairs can begin.