Port Hawkesbury homeowners frustrated about damage from decade of flooding

A couple in Port Hawkesbury, N.S., has been putting up with flooding for a decade and the homeowners are getting frustrated by the lack of action.

They've already lost their baby barn and their mobile home is now suffering structural damage.

"When it's raining really hard and we know we're flooding, it almost sounds like there's a river underneath our home," said Tiffany Brown, who lives with her husband and their son on Stirling Street.

"You can hear it. The first time it happened, we thought one of our pipes burst and was leaking. It's actually kind of scary."

The Browns bought their mobile home and moved onto the property in 2010.

About five years later, water started pooling in their yard and driveway any time it rained heavily.

Brown said the family's baby barn got soaked and the wood rotted, and now their home is sinking into the ground.

"We have some large cracks in our ceilings, down our walls," she said. "Our doors aren't currently closing tight.

"To some, it's just a trailer or a mini home, but we've worked really hard to get this mini home and it's sinking. This is our everything here and we're watching it literally sink in the ground and I feel very unheard and no one's willing to help us at this point."

People living on the street rent their mobile home lots from property company Killam REIT.

Brown said she has talked to several of the company's property managers over the years, but the most recent one has simply stopped responding to her complaints.

She said mobile homes typically need to be levelled on a regular basis, but the couple is holding off for now.

"The ground is too saturated and there's too much moisture, so there's no point of us having that fixed until we have the flooding fixed."

Brown said at one point, the company advised her to make an insurance claim, but she said the family would have to pay the deductible, which would probably result in an increase in premiums and it wouldn't solve the flooding problem.

Port Hawkesbury Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton said the company is responsible for drainage on its property.

She said the town is sympathetic to the Browns' plight and earlier this year helped pay for a drainage study that was also cost-shared by Killam and Nova Scotia Public Works, because Stirling Street homes are bounded on one side by Reeves Street and on another by Route 4, both of which are provincially owned roads.

Chisholm-Beaton said the study presented the property owner with options.

"The real solutions are going to lie in either ditching or some kind of storm-water infrastructure, whatever that looks like, and again that decision lies in the hands of Killam," the mayor said.

No one from Killam REIT was made available for an interview.

In an email, spokesperson Lauren Sinclair said the company is working on a solution.

"It has taken time due to the complexity of the number of parties involved, but we continue to make progress and remain committed to addressing the issue," she said.

The company has installed a berm next to the provincial roads nearby to direct some of the water away from Stirling Street, but Brown said that has not helped.

Sinclair said Killam is keeping its tenants informed and is working with the town and the province to try to stop further flooding, while getting quotes from contractors for ditching and drainage work.

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