When I was a child and the winter thaw came, I was always looking for ways to divert the water toward the storm drain.
If it rained and a puddle formed in the yard, I would dig channels through the dirt to drain it away. At the beach, my first instinct was often to build dams and miniature retention ponds, then break them and watch what the water did.
I was ten years old, basically playing with stormwater management without knowing what it was called.
The stakes become more real when you grow up and watch a creek overflow around the block from your own house.
North Bay has already studied many of these problems. The harder question is what we can afford to fix first, and what happens if we keep waiting.Â
North Bay has watermains, sewers, flood-control projects and other critical infrastructure identified years, sometimes decades, ago but still pushed far into future capital plans.
Nobody celebrates a sewer that never backs up or a culvert that never washes out. But those invisible systems are what allow homes, businesses and neighbourhoods to function.
Protect drinking water, sewage systems, flood protection and critical infrastructure before taking on lower-priority expansion.
Finish the Chippewa Creek Flood Work
The Airport Heights stormwater-retention project was identified years ago to reduce flooding pressure on Chippewa Creek, while other studies identified restricted channels, bridge and culvert problems and places where the creek could be given more room.
Chippewa Creek flooded homes twice in 2026. During the April flood, extreme inflow also overwhelmed the sanitary system enough to require partially treated wastewater to bypass secondary treatment before reaching Lake Nipissing.
Use the hydraulic modelling North Bay already paid for and the 2026 flood data to determine which combination of upstream retention, better crossings, increased creek capacity and reduced stormwater infiltration into sanitary sewers protects the most homes and infrastructure for the money.
Slow the water upstream. Keep it out of the sanitary system. Give the creek room. Protect the homes downstream.
Put the Long-Delayed Infrastructure on One Page
The Lakeshore corridor is the clearest example. Its watermain was identified as severely undersized decades ago, while the same corridor still requires sanitary forcemain redundancy to reduce the risk of sewage backing into upstream buildings during a major failure. Substantial work remains scheduled into the 2030s.
Pinewood Fingers Creek has flood and culvert risks. Sage and Main Street have sewer-capacity concerns. The wastewater system has required secondary-treatment bypasses during high-flow events in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Other parts of the city still need water-system redundancy and wastewater capacity.
North Bay cannot build all of it at once.
Put the major delayed projects on one public page showing when the problem was identified, its present condition, consequence of failure, current schedule, estimated cost, secured and missing funding and cost of further delay. If a critical project is pushed further into the future, Council should explain why publicly.
Get Critical Projects Ready and Bring Outside Money Home
North Bay should not expect local property taxpayers to carry the entire cost of major water, sewer and flood-control projects.
Provincial and federal infrastructure programs can fund substantial portions of this work, but municipalities are in a much stronger position when engineering, modelling, approvals and cost estimates are already advanced.
Use local capital strategically to prepare the highest-priority projects and provide the municipal share needed to compete for larger provincial and federal investments.
Road reconstruction should also be coordinated with water, sewer, stormwater and culvert work wherever practical.
Get the project ready. Get the funding. Dig once.
Build New Housing Where the City Can Carry It
Existing water, sewer, stormwater and road capacity should be part of every decision about where new housing goes.
Growth should strengthen the tax base without creating the next infrastructure deficit.
Build a Capital Plan That Can Survive a Bad Economy
Critical water, sewer, flood and safety projects should remain protected when economic conditions require restraint. Infrastructure that unlocks productive housing and employment should follow, with discretionary expansion the first place Council looks for restraint.