Hello there Mr and Mrs South Bayvie homeowner. This is your City speaking. Here are your orders for today. Disconnect all the downspouts on your home from the sewers. Do it immediately. Make sure the rainwater which will then gush out everywhere doesn’t flow into your neighbor’s basement. It’s okay. We’ve told him the same thing. Also make sure the water doesn’t flow towards the sidewalk and into the sewer. See if you can by some faint chance make the water go onto your lawn and garden, if any. Keep it there. If there’s too much, please use a great big barrel to hold the rainwater. Make sure the standing water doesn’t attract mosquitoes or any other type of pest. Use your best guess as to how to make sure thát Legionnaires Disease doesn’t develop there. Little kids have been known to drown in barrels, but let’s not worry about that. If you can get your neighbors to agree, maybe you can, for a small cost, pump the rainwater up into a tank on your roof. We know you don’t understand why the city built an enormously expensive storm sewer system which is now going to stand empty. But your job is to do as we say.
Your disapproval of disconnecting downspouts is filled with melodramatic undertones. The benefits of re-directing rain water from our sewer systems outweigh the so called “damage” you mention. Water will not “gush” into basements, it is easily re-directed into lawns and gardens as I have done, hoards of mosquitoes will not descend upon rain barrels (because if any do appear a few drops of dish soap will do the trick), and CSA requires rain barrels to be child proof ensuring the safety of children. Before starting a rant about something you may or may not be interested in, please do some research opposed to adopting a sensationalistic writing style. Thank you