Dear Olivia Chow, Rob Ford, David Soknacki, Karen Stintz, John Tory and other mayoral candidates,
Toronto faced some serious weather this past year. The never-ending polar vortex, dramatic ice storms and flash flooding — unsettling reminders that our communities are vulnerable to Mother Nature’s whims — left many of us with cracked pipes, soggy basements and frayed nerves.
Once referred to as “once in a century,” extreme weather is becoming disturbingly common due to climate change. Last year’s city-commissioned report, Toronto’s Future Weather and Climate Driver Study, predicts even more serious storm events over the next decades and increased summer heat and humidity.
The good news: The province just announced a plan to spend $190 million to help Toronto and our municipal neighbours recover from recent weather-related damage. This new money will help pick up the tab for disaster relief centres, hydro crew overtime and cleanup of thousands of trees downed during last December’s ice storm.
But it won’t pay for restoring Toronto’s world-class parks and other storm-damaged green space. And the province has yet to address the fact that we need to help our communities better prepare to withstand future extreme weather.
Knowing there will be dark, costly clouds on the horizon, how will you help get us ahead of the storm?
One of the best strategies for dealing with severe weather events is to steal a page from Mother Nature’s playbook: Bring nature home to the city through green, living infrastructure.
Like most modern urban areas, many Toronto neighbourhoods, such as the Financial District, Humber Summit and the Junction, are almost entirely covered with pavement. During a big rainstorm, impermeable concrete and asphalt dramatically accelerate runoff volume speeding toward waterways and low-lying areas and, ultimately, into Lake Ontario.
But natural ecosystems — forests, fields, marshes and wetlands — absorb rainfall and slow water flowing through vegetation and soils. So incorporating natural systems into the built urban environment mitigates the intensity of storm surges. Green landscapes also cool neighbourhoods during summer heat waves.
We need interventions that bring together natural and built environments — from large networks of interconnected green spaces, as is the plan for Toronto’s revitalized waterfront, to small-scale engineered systems, like green roofs, permeable pavement and green walls.
Many other North American cities are already adopting this more preventative approach to extreme weather. The City of Philadelphia plans to spend $1.6 billion to convert one-third of its impervious asphalt surface to absorptive green spaces in a major stormwater project. And thanks to former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leadership, millions of trees will soon be planted across that city as an investment in better storm water management following devastating hurricane Sandy flooding.
And it’s not just city politicians, like you, who can help storm proof the city.
Homeowners can plant trees and replace paved areas with permeable landscaping. In the west end of the city, the David Suzuki Foundation’s Homegrown National Park Project is crowdsourcing a green corridor along the old Garrison Creek — catalyzing a range of green activities at the household, block and neighbourhood scale.
If devastating storms are the new norm, we need to rebuild the city to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather. In 2008, Toronto developed a world-class plan to help communities cope and adapt to climate change, but these good ideas languish without political will at city hall.
You can change that.
Toronto recently slipped ahead of Chicago as the fourth-largest city in North America. As we hurtle forward with new development projects and our city keeps growing with newcomers each year, it will be critically important that you help us overcome not only immediate challenges — like crippling congestion — but new threats that loom large on the horizon, like climate change.
Make green infrastructure a priority. We’re investing hundreds of millions to revitalize the waterfront, and new developments like Corktown Common are already working to protect nearby low-lying areas like the Distillery District from flooding, while providing recreational opportunities for nearby residents.
If we’re going to build, let’s build green. Green infrastructure will not only help protect homes and businesses from extreme weather, it’ll reduce costs associated with recovery and create healthier communities.
Rise above mudslinging and dirty politics. Instead, get your hands dirty by actively greening our neighbourhoods — maybe even breaking out the mayoral shovel to plant more trees, shrubs and pollinator-friendly flowers in city parks. Support community gardens and encourage Torontonians to green their yards and balconies.
To ensure Toronto grows in health and safety, please put your leadership muscle behind green infrastructure. It’s the best way to get us ahead of the storm.
Special thanks to Faisal Moola on this article, who leads the David Suzuki Foundation in Ontario and is professor at York University and the University of Toronto in environmental sustainability.
David Suzuki is host of CBC’s The Nature of Things and author of more than 30 books on ecology.