The former mayor of Kanata says a plan for a new development near Scotiabank Place can avoid the fate of flash floods as long as the right infrastructure is used.

"If we do the right kind of infrastructure, it does work," said Marianne Wilkinson, councillor for Kanata North.

A huge residential and commercial development called Kanata West is planned for the area, but has been held up by flood studies.

"What we did, was we held it up to check out that all the studies that were done were correct. There were some errors that were corrected," said Wilkinson.

During the latest storm, Wilkinson said newer areas of her ward were spared from severe damage because storm water ponds were in place. She said the new development in Kanata West will also be equipped with those ponds.

Protecting existing homes

Despite the city's efforts to prevent flooding in newer areas, residents living in other parts of the west end say more needs to be done to protect homes that already exist.

"We don't want this to happen again, so what is going to be done for preventative action?" asked Claudette Laugdon at a public meeting in Stittsville Thursday night.

With some residents experiencing three floods in the span of a decade, Wilkinson said prevention is something the city needs to examine closely.

"I think what people are really concerned about is the fact that they were flooded at all and that we haven't done enough measures to stop this type of flooding from happening and that's something that we really have to take a hard look at," she said.

What went wrong?

Even though some workers were on the ground on Saturday, senior staff members weren't immediately contacted. On Thursday, the city's manager apologized for the slow response.

"For some reason the communication didn't get up to the senior level to get the emergency people working on Saturday, when they should have started," said Wilkinson.

"There were people working with the water system and going door-to-door and talking with people, so the on-ground services were working. What wasn't working was the communications that could have provided information through the media to a lot of people that might have helped them in how they dealt with the issues."