I‘ve been thinking about City of Saskatoon policies a lot lately.

The green cart program for composting organic waste, for example, which will finally start rolling out (see what I did there?) over the next two months, was a LONG time coming. I recall saving scraps of uncompostable food, paper and other bits while visiting other cities ages ago, and wondered if we would ever have such a program here.

Well, it’s coming. This is good. It’s a bit of a lifestyle change for most of us, but we have to do it. Besides, all that ucky stuff will get turned into fertilizer, so the outcome rocks too.

Methinks we prairie folk, taking up minuscule spaces on a vast plain, perceive that garbage of all sorts is less of a problem than in other locations. Hong Kong, for example. Vancouver. Paris. You get the picture. I suppose we’d be right, really. But we still have groaning and expensive-to-replace landfills and need to steward our gross detritus.

As I’ve previously mentioned in this space, I am less convinced about the downtown “entertainment district” as I believe they are now calling it. Many folk disagree with me, but I’m very concerned about congestion and other problems. I suppose we’ll see, but it would be a heck of a thing (read: impossible) to go backward if it doesn’t work out.  

I’m also less convinced about centering arts events in Friendship Park and remain opposed to that idea. Let’s consider the SaskTel Saskatchewan Jazz Festival’s plans to change locations from the Bessborough Gardens and environs, and wiggle southwest down the riverbank to Victoria Park.

Executive director Shannon Josdal has told the media the festival needs a big and less expensive space this year due to economic conditions, and they want to include an artisan market and family fun zone, for example. To be clear: Josdal has not in any way said anything negative about Friendship Park; this is me talking here. But obviously, the festival has chosen a different spot, so that says something to me.

Moving back from brickbats to bouquets, I will turn to storm ponds with a bit of a personal slant on the whole idea.

The city is building dry storm ponds in nine locations. Two already exist in the W.W. Ashley and Churchill parks. The next one, in Weaver Park, is coming soon to a neighbourhood near me. Well, okay, in my neighbourhood. Construction of the other six is planned for the next four years.

When this idea first hit my radar, I thought, oh dear, who is going to drown in one of those things after a gully washer? Typical of my thought process. (Even now I’m like, “tie your children to your hips after rainstorms!”)

I’m told the Churchill one, which is not far from me and which I admit to having admired from afar, is working well. This news pleased me enormously, I must say.

I think back to one very dark and stormy night, when at two in the morning I met my wide-eyed neighbours in the street. Susanne from across the street and I sloshed out into the middle of the road to freeze in shin-deep water.

I was fairly new to this wonderful block (I mean really wonderful. Love my neighbours.) So I ask her, through chattering teeth, “How, um, deep is this likely to go?”

Honestly, I can’t recall her exact answer, but she did say this had happened before and more than once. Well, the water came halfway up our lawn before it stalled and finally receded. Obviously, this means several houses nearer the intersection were flooded.

Happened again this summer. I was away from home while it poured, and when I got back there was, for the first time, some seepage. This was largely because we did not, at the moment, have a driveway (long story) and hence zero landscaping away from the foundation.

Again, the tree needle detritus (we have a LOT of pines and such around here), mulch and other organic goop showed the water made it about six, eight feet up the lawn. Eep.

We do, indeed, need to do something about this flooding problem in the pockets of the city where heavy rain causes terror and/ or damage probably every five years. Possibly less. That seems to be our pattern, anyway.

So yup, bring this storm pond on. Two thumbs up. Just please make sure they are made as safe as possible for unsuspecting visitors and especially wee ones.

• Joanne Paulson

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