As the spring melt approaches, residents on some St-Leonard streets are nervous about flooding. Some basements have flooded in the past and citizens say the borough mayor isn’t tackling the problem. With lots of snow piling up on La Durantaye Street, neighbours recount their stories of water in their basements. “My bathtub was full. It was like Niagara Falls,” said resident Liliana Biondi Stellato. Her neighbour, Biaggino Viscelli, added: “We had a flood, the water everywhere, and it was coming down.” They say they’ve been begging the city for help. “We’ve been fighting this with all our hearts, but they didn’t want to listen to us. Just fix this problem, that’s all we want is to fix it,” Biondi Stellato said. St-Leonard Borough Mayor Dominic Perri says there’s a plan in place. “The City of Montreal has a reserve, the $151 million in the budget for this year to fix the [Langelier] water collector,” he said in an interview. He says doubling the Langelier water collector capacity will help increase drainage in St-Leonard. “It will cause major traffic problems. And so, when you open largely from sidewalk to sidewalk for a long time, it’s a major project,” Perri said. Tina Di Serio says Langelier is too far from her own worries about a wet basement. “That’s not going to make a difference here,” she said. “And it’s not going to help the citizens. And by the time they want to fix this, it could be 2029. In the meantime, when it starts raining, it’s going to flood now til July. There’s going to be more damage. They’re not getting insured anymore. They can’t sell their homes.” Perri says there are subsidies available for homeowners who are at risk of flooding. “There’s a program in the City of Montreal with $20 million in its budget called Reno-plex. People can apply for waterproof doors and some pumps and so on,” the mayor said. Back on La Durantaye street, Viscelli says those subsidies aren’t enough. “Over $30,000 to break in the pipes and to put the pump and everything — $30,000 is a lot of money," he said. Viscelli said he’s afraid to leave the house whenever there’s rain in the forecast. Meanwhile, Biondi Stellato says she feels stuck. “All you have to do, we have to cry. That’s all we do over here. We get outside and we speak and we cry. We hold on to each other. What kind of a life do we have over here?”
