Jessica;

I would like to clear up a few points in your email.

While your landlord may be correct in that the house may be serviced
by separate storm and sanitary connections (I can't confirm that),
both these connections would outlet to the same combined sewer in the
road. There is only one sewer Cataraqui and one on Marion, and they
are both combined sewers meaning that they accept both rain water and
sewage.

With respect to the Wyandotte project, there is no sewer work being
undertaken as part of that project. Windsor Utilities is replacing
the watermain and services and the City will reconstruct the pavement
following that work. This project would have no impact on the sewers
servicing your property.

You are most likely correct in that there is a correlation between
rainfall and the slow running plumbing in your house. This is due to
the combined nature of the sewer that services your property. During
rain events, combined sewers fill with rainwater and therefore have
limited capacity to accept flows from buildings.

With respect to the apartment building across the street from you, all
rainfall runoff from this property would have entered the sewer system
via foundation drains prior to the fire, so the fact that the basement
may have flooded and the water is now entering the floor drain would
change the drainage pattern very little. In fact, rainwater entering
the sewers from this property would be very small in proportion to
that coming from the catchbasins draining the roads in the area.

With respect to abandonment of the connections servicing the apartment
building, that would be addressed when the building is demolished by
the Building Department. If you have concerns regarding the state of
the building, please contact the Building Department via 311.

Hopefully, this answers some of your questions. Please contact me if
you want to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely;
Name Withheld, P.Eng.
A/Contracts Co-ordinator

the plug was like 50 feet deep in the drain, almost certainly in the city pipes. if i understand correctly, that means the city should have paid to remove it...

i've seen people throw everything you can think of down the drains. it was probably garbage from the street that washed through after the storm.

i want to be clear: i can't complain about my landlord in terms of responsiveness, interest, etc. i mean, he just paid to clear a city drain. on the other hand, it's because he wouldn't listen to what i was saying....