High waters return to Sydney's flood zone

Alma Head worries about what another massive storm would mean for her business.

By early Tuesday morning, floodwaters had risen up over the steps of her Sydney, N.S., hair salon. 

And for the second time in less than five days, the salon's entryway was blocked off and customers were told to reschedule. 

"I have a lot of staff that have children and they need to work, and I need to work," said Head, who owns and operates Alma's Family Hair Salon on Morrison Street.

"And when you're not opening a couple of days a week, it really hurts."

On Saturday, roughly 30 millimetres of rain came down and combined with melting snow and ice. At least another 50 millimetres fell overnight and into Tuesday morning.  

Since moving to Sydney's south end nearly 15 years ago, Head said she's been forced to shut her doors four to five times a year due to flooding

But nothing compares to the flash flooding that happened on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 when dozens of people were forced to flee from homes, businesses and community centres. 

Head said the damage was not covered by her insurance and cost her upward of $150,000 in repairs. 

"It cost a pretty penny, so I can't, I have no idea how I would survive another one like that," said Head.

CBRM spokesperson Christina Lamey said that following the massive flood, engineering work identified at least four projects to be completed to help prevent floods in the future.

Although half of the work is now done, she said there were reports of flooded basements and roads following Tuesday's rain.

Lamey said weather conditions in the past few days have made the backup of water unavoidable.

"The amount of rainfall and the frozen ground that it first landed on just conspires to create a large amount of water trying to get out to the harbour, but can't because of the high tide," Lamey said. 

Work is expected to begin this winter on a project to create berms near the Baille Ard trail that will be used to hold back water in big rain events, thus reducing flooding to residential neighbourhoods downstream.

"As we know, if it's high tide and we have a lot of water trying to get out to [Sydney] harbour, it just doesn't have anywhere to go," she said.

"Hopefully, the plan with the engineered structure is that it will reduce that amount of water flow at the times when it's needed to, [and] not be headed toward the lowest point of land."

Lamey said another project to alter the flow of water at Gilhomes Lake has yet to be completed.