Posted Jan 7, 2017, 1:40 PM
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CBC Hamilton: How Hamilton's ghost rivers haunt city's new development
'Water always wins in the end': Lost rivers slow development and capture the imagination
By Samantha Craggs, CBC News | January 7, 2017
Louie Santaguida's company is building a 30-storey condo tower in downtown Hamilton. And for a few months, he thought he had plans for its substructure nailed.
He'd already sold 70 per cent of the units, which include two-bedroom penthouses for $684,000. Then came an unexpected delay — an old stream under the future home of The Connolly.
"We're sitting on a former river basin from 10,000 years ago," Santaguida said in the fall. "We're overcoming geotechnical challenges. We've been doing that for the last three months."
Santaguida's dilemma isn't a unique one. Peel back Hamilton's surface and you'd find decades of streams, rivers and watercourses that once existed. They're now known as "ghost rivers."
Centuries ago, Hamilton was a blanket of lush green space. Then along came humans, who wanted more space to build.
Sometimes they rerouted water into culverts and built roads and parking lots on top. Sometimes they filled in the watercourses — with dirt, with garbage, with other material.
Generations later, developers still shoulder the impact. Like Santaguida, they dig in and find the soil soft and unstable.
"Water always wins in the end," said Dan McKinnon, the city's general manager of public works. "Unless you reroute it in a sustainable way, it will come back to haunt you."
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