City of London initiative helping those with flooding prone basements

The flooded basement of Sarah Van De Vooren's home is seen in London, Ont. on Tuesday, June 23, 2015. (Derrick Kersey / Facebook)

As London braces for its second major rainstorm of the week, water weary homeowners fear another round of basement flooding.

But there may be an innovative London-first solution, coming to hard hit neighbourhoods that targets the source of the problem.

The traditional and costly solution was to install bigger sewers under the street.

But London recently had success with a new approach -- leave the sewers alone and pay to upgrade the houses instead.

There's a new sound residents on Blanchard Crescent hear during a storm.

"You hear all the thunder, water coming down and then you hear the pump kick in and you know its working," says homeowner Francisco Ruiz.

Once one of the London streets most prone to basement flooding, Blancahrd Cres. is now the North American example of how cities can solve the problem affordably with sump pumps.

"If we didn't have it i think we would have had inches of water in our basement as opposed to nothing at all," says homeowner Jenny Ruiz.

A pilot project disconnected weeping tiles from participating houses-- replacing them with sump pumps.

That stops excess storm water from entering the sewers and backing up into basements.

London already has a grant program to pay qualifying homeowners 75% of the cost but few homes participated.

So in a North American first -- city hall offered to pay the entire cost -- plus give a thousand dollars for future maintenance.

It cost $460,000s but the city avoided a $10 million project to expand sewer lines in the neighourhood.

"We're estimating about 80% savings and cost if we could roll this out to other parts of the city," says city engineer Tom Copeland.

The challenge for the pilot project moving forward is participation.

It's relatively easy to get someone with a wet basement to accept free help from the city plus a thousand dollars.

But homeowners with dry basements may not see the immediate value.

City engineers wanted at least 50% participation to make the changes effective -- but of three streets offered the help only some homeowners on Blanchard Cres. accepted.

Thursday night, council directed city engineers prepare a report by August 24th about the cost of expanding the project to other parts of the city.

"I've been in homes with two storms in 9 months and its big amounts of damage and I'm worried that in the time before we get the report back there may be another storm for these people," says councillor Virginia Ridley.

Staff will examine which streets would benefit most from expanding the program.

" would do it again. It's a peace of mind, it's done its job," says Francisco Ruiz.