Planning Stormwater Infrastructure for Vaughan’s Emerging Downtown
The City of Vaughan retained Civica Infrastructure to update the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre’s stormwater servicing strategy as the area planned for continued growth.
The Challenge
The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre is evolving from an industrial area into a high-density downtown. The project team needed to assess existing ponds and future storage requirements while balancing target release rates with limited land available for facilities.
Objectives
How VO Was Used
Civica used VO to represent the existing and proposed stormwater pond network. The model compared outlet and catchment scenarios, routed 2-year through 100-year design storms, estimated storage use and compared releases to Black Creek.
Findings and Decisions Supported
A preferred southeast pond scenario
The report recommended carrying Scenario 5 forward. For the 100-year event, the published analysis reported 19,959 m³ of required storage and a modeled discharge of 1.07 m³/s.
Lower modeled releases to Black Creek
The modeled comparison reported lower proposed-condition flows at selected locations and events.
| Location | Event | Change |
|---|---|---|
| West branch | 2-year | 41% lower |
| West branch | 100-year | 30% lower |
| Main branch | 5-year | 26% lower |
| Main branch | 100-year | 12% lower |
Supporting a Long-Term Strategy
The broader study informed a strategy that included retrofits to existing facilities, a new southeast pond, sewer upgrades and transition requirements for development sites.
The associated sewer and overland dual-drainage analysis used another third-party software. Since this project was completed, Smart City Water has added the capability to perform sewer and overland dual-drainage analysis.