Windsor-Essex conservation officials worried about water-logged lands

The Windsor-Essex landscape can't hold any more water at the moment, a situation that has left conservation officials worried about the effects of any incoming precipitation in the days and weeks ahead.

Tim Byrne, the director of watershed management services for the Essex Region Conservation Authority, said a combination of see-sawing temperatures and a warmer-than-average winter have left the land saturated with water.

"We went through a myriad of freeze-thaw cycles, where we would see periods where temperatures would drop and then they would spike back up," Byrne told CBC News, when describing the effect of the weather this winter.

"And so the number of freeze-thaw cycles that we went through this winter and … the somewhat milder winter that we had, we basically, through the entire winter, were in [an] almost saturated state as far as the condition of the soil and condition of our areas that actually would hold, you know, runoff in the soil and in the soil column."

Byrne also said the spurts of spring-like winter the region saw in February brought in even more precipitation that had nowhere to go — and that sent runoff into storm sewers and bodies of water in the region.

"The soil has no more capacity to actually hold any type of runoff," he said.

As a result, Byrne and other officials are now "gravelly concerned" about the impact of any further precipitation.

"Right now, any measurable rainfall creates runoff," he said.

Byrne and other officials have been closely monitoring the forecasts, rates of runoff and where things stand in bodies of water around the region.

While he can see why some people liked having a warmer winter, Byrne said it was the kind of season that has made his job more difficult.

"The somewhat mild winter was maybe a blessing for roads, as far as like snow removal and that type of thing, but it's been a curse with respect to having to manage storm-water runoff and manage drainage throughout the region," he said.