By Teresa Smith, Canwest News Service
People in the southern Ontario town of Wingham are taking an old-fashioned idea and using it to tackle a modern issue.
As part of a pilot project, 1,000 residents in the small town will be supplied with rain barrels to conserve water and, hopefully, to divert it from the sewer system, preventing back-ups and flooding.
A spokeswoman for the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Mary Lou O'Reilly, said Wingham, like many communities across Canada, has a combined sewer-run-off system which means that waste water from homes and the run-off from rain flow through the same sewer system.
"When you expect a lot more rain — as a result of climate change, which we all expect — and you live in a community where the infrastructure is outdated, you have a recipe for flooding," she said.
The project will measure how much the collective use of rain barrels can reduce stress on sewer systems and prevent basement flooding during intense storms.
"If it works," said O'Reilly, "We'll be doing everything we can to have a rain barrel at the end of every rain spout."
O'Reilly said that, in a town of 55,000 households, projections show that 2.5 million gallons of water — the equivalent to the capacity of five Olympic-size swimming pools — could be diverted.
"That's a lot of water to keep out of an aging sewer system," she added.
Across the country, insurance companies have noticed an increase in claims resulting from both water damage and natural disasters caused by more severe weather patterns.
According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, natural disaster claims today are 20 times higher than they were 30 years ago.
O'Reilly stressed the importance of adapting to the inevitability of climate change.
"Obviously, caring about our carbon footprint is of paramount importance, but just as important is our capacity as communities to adapt to the reality that, with climate change which is here and now, has come disastrous weather and, in some cases, disastrous property losses."
O'Reilly expects a typically rainy summer and hopes to have early indicators — fewer flooded basements and fewer insurance claims — of the project's success by the fall.
Wingham is approximately 250 kilometres northwest of Toronto.