Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund - Infrastructure Canada Announces Toronto, Vaughan , Markham, Regional Municipality of York Grants

Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund (DMAF) funding has been announced for Alberta and Ontario - the announcement for GTA municipalities has been made March 26.  Funding in the City of Toronto, City of Vaughan and the City of Markham is focused on earlier development areas with limited design standards for municipal infrastructure and limited land use planning surrounding floodplain hazard management. The total funding is $150,388,000.

The Markham projects fall under its long term Flood Control Program and include sewer upgrades in the West Thornhill community where Phase 3 and Phase 4 are being 40% funded through DMAF, the Don Mills Channel flood control upgrades including a central wetland storage/floodplain restoration will replace vulnerable properties to be purchased as well as culvert upgrades, and sewer upgrades in the vicinity of the Thornhill Community Centre which will reduce flood risks for vulnerable populations. Details on the West Thornhill Project are here: link, and the Don Mills Channel project details are here: link

The Vaughan projects include the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Black Creek and Edgeley Pond  - details on the project are here: link

The Toronto project involves the Midtown Toronto Relief Storm Sewer that is part of the city's long term and comprehensive Basement Flooding Protection program. The project will help reduce flooding for almost 900 homes during a 100-year flood event. See details on the overall program here: link

The Regional Municipality of York project involves the twinning of a wastewater collection system forcemain (pressurized flow). This has been called a a significant component of the Upper York Sewage Solutions project. See project details here: link

*** ANNOUNCEMENT ***

Canada helps protect communities across the Greater Toronto Area from flooding
and storms

Four new projects approved in four communities in the City of Toronto and the Regional Municipality of York

Climate change is happening and it is affecting Canadian communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast. More and more Canadians realize that natural hazards like floods, wildland fires and winter storms are increasing in frequency and intensity. For many communities, these hazards are significantly affecting critical infrastructure and can result in health and safety risks, interruptions in essential community services and increasingly high costs for recovery and replacement.

The Government of Canada’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) is a 10-year, $2 billion national program designed to help communities better withstand current and future risks of natural hazards.

The following four projects in the Greater Toronto Area have been approved for federal funding totaling $150,388,299 and for municipal funding totaling $252,682,449.

Location	Project Name	Federal Funding	Municipal Funding
Toronto, City of	Construction of the Midtown Toronto Relief Storm Sewer for Basement Flooding Protection	$37,160,000	$82,840,000
York, Regional Municipality of	York Durham Sewage System Forcemain Twinning Project	$48,000,000	$72,000,000
Markham, Corporation of the City of	City of Markham’s Flood Control Project (Don Mills Channel, West Thornhill, Thornhill Community Centre)	$48,640,000	$72,960,000
Vaughan, City of	Implementing Vaughan Stormwater Flood Mitigation projects	$16,588,299	$24,882,449

***

An announcement was made regarding DMAF funding in Edmonton ($53,000,000) for the construction of two dry ponds in Parkallen’s Ellingson Park =-these are two of 13 planned facilities and are expected to reduce the amount of water pooling in the area by about 84 per cent: ink

An announcement was made regarding DMAF funding in Canmore, Alberta ($13,760,000) for a project involves reinforcing flood mitigation structures along several steep mountain creeks in the Bow Valley to reduce the risks of debris flooding, and re-vegetation and bio-engineering work to control erosion problems: link - more on the project here. 

An announcement was made regarding DMAF funding of the Calgary Springbank Off-stream Reservoir Project ($168.5 million) in Rocky View County which will divert extreme flood flows from the Elbow River to a storage reservoir to be contained temporarily until the flood peak has passed : link . The reservoir would have capacity of over 70 million cubic litres and would be located 15 kilometres west of Calgary between Highway 8 and the Trans-Canada Highway, and east of Highway 22.

More on the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund and projects: http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/dmaf-faac/index-eng.html

***

Background on return on investment (ROI) cost benefit analysis to support the Markham DMAF application is here considering its city-wide Flood Control Program that shows a ROI, or benefit cost ratio of over 5 if total losses are mitigated - a lower ROI would result from deferral of only insured losses:

Grey and Green Infrastructure Benefit Cost, Return on Investment Analysis for Flood Control and Asset Management from Robert Muir

The Markham DMAF project ROI values are based on individual project costs and benefits, with these benefits based on deferred total losses (i.e., higher than insured losses). The average ROI benefit-cost ratio is 4.7 for the three Markham projects.

***

Benefit cost analysis for infrastructure adaptation to extreme weather and climate change using grey and green infrastructure strategies is presented in an upcoming WEAO paper provided in an earlier post: link. 

Green Infrastructure Implementation Funding - Private Sector Costs Proposed as Offsets Paid by Benefiting Municipalities

How to fund green infrastructure and low impact
development stormwater management measures on
private property .... no easy answers. 

The report Economic Instruments to Facilitate Stormwater Management on Private Property is an interesting read, looking at how green infrastructure (GI) could be implemented and funded on private property to advance stormwater management goals. There is a link to the report.

The White Paper / study report explores the costs and benefits of green infrastructure, or low impact development (LID) measures, and looks at the barriers to implementation on private property - and there are many. These Barriers to the Implementation of LID Technologies include:

1. High up-front costs
2. Uncertain ongoing maintenance requriements
3. Low return on investment
4. Limited benefits accrue directly to property owners, yet they incur the high costs
5. High transaction costs

The report illustrates the types of costs and benefits under #4 in the following graphic:

Imbalance in public and private costs and benefits for green infrastructure / low impact development implementation.

The graphic illustrates that private costs are high, but the majority potential benefits are public.  Also, the private benefits are very low, like the potential reduction in stormwater management fees available to compensate for the GI or LID measures.

How high are the costs for implementing GI or LIDsfor improved stormwater management? Another interesting graphic shows annualized costs considering capital costs distributed over a 25 year service life (e.g., like annual depreciation of the asset) and annual operation and maintenance (O&M) cost.

LID capital and operation and maintenance costs greatly exceed the potential annual credit for stormwater fees. 

The report's impervious percentage of 20% seems too low
compared to typical urban development patterns in Ontario.
Typical residential percentages are double the report's
assumed value. Typical non-residential percentages can
even be higher (i.e., lots covered almost entirely by impermeable
roof top and parking lot surfaces.

The annual cost of LID measures averages about $5,000 per year considering a 'lot size' drainage area of 5000 square metres, or $10,000 per hectare. The cost estimates consider an area with 1000 square metres of impermeable area, meaning an impervious area percentage of 20% (i.e., very, very low for many urban areas ... meaning these average costs should be higher - see example impervious area coverage at right - while this is residential development, non-residential development has followed similar trends).

Given the disparity in costs and benefits, an obvious barrier to implementation of GI and LID on private property, what is proposed to incentivize implementation? Make someone else pay of course! Who pays? The Public Sector. They call this "OFFSETS" and explain it as follows:

"Offsets are payments offered to proponents of LID infrastructure in compensation
for costs incurred when significant benefits accrue to other parties. A principle of
equity or fairness underlies this type of compensation based on the argument that
costs should be borne proportionately by those who benefit from the green
investment.

Public sector contributions in the form of offsets are justified to achieve a balanced
approach to cost sharing that reflects how all costs and benefits are incurred. Doing
this requires identification and quantification of benefits.."

So ultimately, the idea is that the public pays regardless of whether GI or LID is implemented on public land or on private land. What could these costs be in Ontario and what are the impacts to Ontario taxpayers?

Ontario has over 850,000 hectares of urban land use that
does not have enhanced stormwater management control, and
could be eligible for green infrastructure (LID) retrofits.

Ontario's SOLRIS land use mapping indicates 852,000 hectares of urban land use as of the year 2000. Previously we've estimated the capital cost considering a unit cost of $390,000 per hectare based on Ontario tender costs - see image ar right. All this urban land would in all likelihood have no water quality treatment and be eligible for stormwater managment enhancements. How do we know? Table 1 in the Economic Instruments to Facilitate Stormwater Management on Private Property report indicates that despite the use of quality controls, "Use of enhanced controls is negligible." (see table below).

If we retrofit the untreated area with GI / LID, the annualized cost would be simply $10,000 per hectare x 852,000 hectares = $8.5 billion per year ... forever.

Assuming this cost is allocated to municipalities who benefit from the green infrastructure, and these municipalities distribute the cost to Ontario households, we can estimate the annual household cost. The 2016 census indicates that there are 5,169,170 private households in Ontario meaning a cost of $1650 per household per year. Given household after-tax income of $65,285, the green infrastructure cost would represent about 2.5% of this income.

The Ontario stormwater infrastructure deficit has been estimated at $6.8 billion. If green infrastructure / low impact development lifecycle costs are not funded annually by taxpayers, and debt is used to fund the infrastructure investment, like a green bond, this deficit would double in a single year, and increase by the more than the existing deficit each and every year.

Allocating GI / LID costs seems like a shell game.

Allocating GI / LID costs seems like a shell game, shifting private property costs to the public sector, shifting public sector costs to
the downstream municipalities that accrue potential benefits. In the end there is only one source of funding however.... all of us. Elaborate credit systems, offset schemes, Drainage Act assessments, and fancy 'green bonds' are ways of spreading out the high up-front cost of LIDs. But ultimately, we all pay.

It will be interesting to see the next stages of the study authors' work and how the White Paper could be applied. The report states for example "The White Paper also provides background for a pilot study to be undertaken in the Southdown area of Mississauga. This study will examine the potential of aggregating private commercial property under the Drainage Act to secure installation of communal LID technologies and realize cost-efficiencies." The exploration of the Drainage Act was part of another study under the banner "Aggregated Communal Approaches to Green Infrastructure Implementation". The Drainage Act allows costs to be distributed to landowners across catchments in which improvements are made - the challenge is that landowners against whom costs are assessed have to buy in to the cost-sharing plan and can appeal.