It used to happen “once in a blue moon” but last week was the fifth time this summer that the lake at Spring Valley Park has overflowed its banks, water pouring under and through trailers, into garden sheds and lying knee-deep on lawns and flower beds along Lakeside Drive.
Granted the trailers are close to the shores of the lake and there have been some torrential downpours this summer, such as the one last Thursday night that resulted in a call to The Confederate Friday morning. But, Jean Panasiuk and her neighbors are getting frustrated.
They claim if park management listened to weather forecasts and opened even one dam when heavy rain is expected, the flooding wouldn’t be happening. She says that isn’t being done because the park manager and owners don’t live on-site.
Ms. Panasiuk and her husband, Lawrie, have had a trailer at Spring Valley for 26 years. When the campground was owned by Ron and Sandy Cross, flooding was pretty much non-existent, she said, because when they heard rain was coming they opened a dam or two so it wouldn’t overflow its banks. Parkbridge Lakeside, Waterside & Cottage Communities purchased the campground five years ago; flooding has become a regular event.
Manager Joe Gallagher “for some reason won’t open up the floodgates. We all went up to speak to him but he won’t take responsibility.”
Bill Wells of Parkbridge pointed out Monday that flooding was widespread, not just at Spring Valley Park, after “a lot of rain came down in a short time Thursday evening.” However, he called the park manager after receiving call from The Confederate on Friday and checked on the flooding there.  He was told the “control in the dam was wide open. It couldn’t have been opened any more… the manager was getting as much water out of there as he could”.
When told that residents claimed Mr. Gallagher didn’t open the dam until after the lake had overflowed his banks, Mr. Wells said he “wasn’t there” so couldn’t comment. However, he said Mr. Gallagher has a tough job – he gets complaints if the water level is too high and flooding occurs and complaints if the water level is too low which is bad for the fish and promotes weed growth.
“There’s no way he can know how much rain there’s going to be in any storm event,” Mr. Wells said. “If he lets too much water out and it doesn’t rain as predicted, then the water is too low. If there’s a lot of rain and he doesn’t let enough out, then the lake level is too high.”
Mr. Gallagher told The Confederate he “pulled the board” at nine o’clock Saturday morning, after the lake had already flooded because of the overnight rain but, by Saturday morning the lake level was even higher because of water run off.
“There was absolutely nothing I could do,’ he said. “It happens when we get regularly bad weather, when we get flash rains we flood.”
That doesn’t satisfy Ms. Panasiuk and her across the street neighbor, Wade Oliver. He is a more recent fulltime resident at Spring Valley – there are about 30 couples and families total – which also offers seasonal and overnight RV sites.
“I retired and came here for stress-free living,” Mr. Oliver said. “It sure hasn’t worked out that way.”
He points to a neighbor’s trailer – in a previous flood the skirting around the bottom was destroyed and the back deck shifted. As a result of the damage, a family of raccoons moved in underneath and the owner had to move out.
“You just can’t live in it,” Mr. Oliver said. “Three or four weeks back they didn’t open the dam, the water had no place to go, this is want happened.”
The neighbor, a single woman, is now living with her mother in Mount Forest.
“We spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars – on our gardens, our flowers, taxes,” says Allan Power, another permanent resident, “and then the water pours through and underneath our trailers, into our garden sheds, the water actually tipped over my propane tank last time so I had to have them moved.” He points to the mulch washed off of his flowerbeds and the minnows swimming in puddles on his lawn.
He admits he lost his temper talking to Mr. Gallagher Friday morning, smashing his fist onto the roof of his own car, which resulted in the park manager threatening to call the police but didn’t follow through.
“It was plain frustration. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said.
Both Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Wells told The Confederate that they have been working with both the Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority (SVCA) and the Ministry of the Environment in securing permits to change the dam system at the park and hopefully alleviate flooding in the future.
We have been working on a project to put in different control gates (and it’s taken) a couple of years to get through the all the approvals,” Mr. Wells said, adding the preliminary work including an engineering plan has been completed. The work has been approved and will be done this August/September.
Parkbridge Lakeside, Waterside & Cottage Communities include, as well as Spring Valley Park, Victoria Harbour Resort in Victoria Harbour, Wasaga CountryLife, Wasaga Dunes, Wasaga Pines and Klondike Park, all in Wasaga Beach, Our Ponderosa at Ipperwash Beach and Leisure Lake in Leamington.