Alex Nino Gheciu Staff Reporter

While most of the GTA has recovered from last week’s epic flood, Ken Hills still finds himself marooned.

The raging currents that thrashed through the 60-year-old’s Mississauga neighbourhood on July 8 destroyed his basement apartment, leaving him without a home — unless you count the cramped tent in his backyard.

“I’ve lost everything,” said Hills, standing in front of the canvas shelter that has acted as his humble abode since last week. The four feet of water that rushed in through his floor drains and back door has left his apartment a mess, reeking of mould and mildew.

“I don’t have insurance. I’m unemployed at the moment. I’ve had no choice but to live here.”

Hills, who suffers from diabetes, is one of hundreds of residents along Cooksville Creek who have been displaced from their homes since last week’s deluge. Locals say they are more vulnerable to floods than others because of inadequacies in Mississauga’s culverts, sewers and storm drains. City staff and members of the Credit Valley Conservation Authority met with neighbours on Paisley Blvd., near Hurontario St., Tuesday to discuss ways of moving forward from the damage.

The freak downpour was all too familiar for residents in the area, who experienced similar devastation four years ago. The 67.6 mm of rain that hammered Mississauga on Aug. 4, 2009, caused intense flooding in the neighbourhood, prompting the city to launch the Cooksville Creek Task Force to form strategies to prevent such destruction in the future.

“Usually, there are just a couple drops of water in the creek,” said Hills. “When it rains there are so many city culverts that drain into it … it becomes a sewer.”

Martin Powell, Mississauga’s commissioner of transportation and works, said the neighbourhood “is an older area that was developed prior to the current provincial regulations for flood prevention, which came after Hurricane Hazel.”

Powell said the city currently has various projects underway —from building berms to creating a retention pond north of Highway 403 — to mitigate flood damage in the area. However, he said those strategies are only in the environmental assessment stage and still require funding approval. Some of the strategies, he said, could take 10 to 15 years to implement.

For Cooksville Creek residents, that’s not nearly soon enough.

“What if we get another storm in August?” said Daniel Lamy, 40, who lives down the street from Hills. He and his wife have been unable to return to their house since last week’s flood caused two of the property’s foundation walls to cave in. “We’ve risked our lives already. Somebody is going to die here.”

Powell noted that in December, Mississauga city councillors approved a new levy for stormwater management to boost funds for flood-mitigation infrastructure. But he notes these strategies can’t be implemented overnight.

“We’re moving forward with this strategy but it does take time,” he said. “These are not small capital projects. They’re major ones.”

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In the meantime, residents such as Hills will just have to weather the potential storms.

“I was in the armed forces for about 10 years,” he said. “I’ll survive somehow.”

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