Dozens of Corunna residents attended a St. Clair Township council meeting on Tuesday, April 7, to voice their concerns after many homes in the town were flooded over the Easter weekend.
Three inches of rain fell in a short period of time in Corunna, flooding yards, roads, and basements.
In an interview with Sarnia News Today, Nicki Krohn said flooding has been a repeat problem in her childhood home for several years now.
"It's impacted my parents greatly. They're both in their 70s. This just seems to be an impossible fight, an impossible battle. It's really hard to watch it. Like with many people, this is the third time in 18 months that people have been displaced in their own homes," she said. "It's impacting the mental and physical health of my parents. It's taking me away from my family and my jobs to try to help them save what they can from their basement. Then, like, add in their health concerns, not only what stress causes, but the water itself. How many toxins are in that water? We've got animal feces, trash, chemicals, that sort of thing, that's now in my parents' basement."
Krohn herself raised the same issues during a council meeting last year.
"May of 2025, I was before council about the same issue. This was after the second major event in my parents' home. Public Works has my parents' house. They made recommendations such as building a berm between their property and the properties behind them, having neighbours that back onto their property adjust their property grading to increase the size of the grate for the catch basin in the backyard. And then the other option was to sue the township."
Krohn stated her parents have exhausted all options as far as trying to outfit their home to prevent flooding, that they have not proceeded with legal action, and at this point want firm action from the township.
"They have two sump pumps. They have French drains. Their eavestroughs go right into the stormwater system. They have they've dug up the outside. They've dug up the inside. There is nothing more they can physically do to their home to prevent this from happening," she said. "A plan. I would like to see our mayor and Public Works collaborating to get these assessments done."
In an interview with Sarnia News today, local business owner and Corunna resident Crystal Kenny said she and her partner moved to the area to live with and support her father-in-law and said flooding wasn't an issue until the last few years.
"It was her childhood home. So over probably 55 years, and only once have they ever had a flood, I think, back in maybe the early 80s. And so in the last 14 months, we've had three major floods," said Kenny. "We put a sump pump in, a cement pad, and a brand new deck. Then the second flood came in September, and then the third in April. So three floods in the last 14 months (and it's) never happened like this so bad. But now it's the drainage. We feel that it's infrastructure-based."
Both Krohn and Kenny were at the township council meeting on April 7, where several residents raised their concerns.
The township stated that the flooding found over the Easter weekend on Beckwith Street is being looked into by a third-party drainage engineering company called Spriet Associates.
As for other streets and residences, Public Works said it would have to look into specific cases.
"You all have to call in with your addresses and what difference because everybody would be different," said Mayor Jeff Agar during the meeting. "Please call them up (public works). It's not just blowing smoke. Give them a call, and they'll mark down everybody's address. Give them what your circumstances were, and we'll go from there."
Councillor Holly Foster made a motion to get a third-party study done on the system as a whole. "I feel for every resident. I think we do need to act on this. The cost to fix the infrastructure will be astronomical. We need to know what the problem is. I think we do need the study."
Council agreed to the study and also stated there is no quick fix to the water issues many residents are facing.
