No storm infrastructure issues in St. Catharines before rainstorms led to floods, mayor and experts say

Alongside the streets of St. Catharines, Ont., the signs of recent flooding are still piled at the curb.

Couches, mattresses and drywall sit outside homes, a reminder of the damage left by multiple major storms in under two weeks.

"We had three major storm events," Mayor Mat Siscoe said Tuesday. "These are the biggest storm events the city's ever seen in quick succession over the course of 11 or 12 days."

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Siscoe said the first storm was largely handled by the stormwater system, but the ground was saturated by the time the second and third storms hit, and the system couldn't handle the volume.

That led to widespread overland flooding and sewer backups into homes.

"In many cases, it was sewage that was coming into the home," Siscoe said.

Dave White, who owns White Orchard Farms outside St. David's, grows garlic on nearly nine hectares of land near the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment.

During the latest storms, his fields were completely under water, but he didn't lose any crops.

"Luckily, we did harvest our garlic a week before the floods," White said.

He pre-emptively took action based on what happened a year ago, when he wasn't able to get his entire crop out before heavy rain and lost part of it, as well as what he had been seeing over the last couple years.

"We've been making sure our ditches are cleaned and our fields are able to handle [excess of water]," White said. "We made some trenches in the field to help escort some of the water out of here because of the last four or five years."

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White also operates a restoration company. He said the past few weeks have been overwhelming, with a wave of calls from homeowners whose properties have flooded.