How Montreal hopes to better manage its rainwater with parks that act as sponges

A light rain has fallen and the pavement around Dickie Moore Park on Beaumont Avenue in Montrealis still wet Friday morning, but three small groups of toddlers wearing bright orange bibs have ambled down the road into the park and onto its wooden play structures.

"When it rains, we usually come here with the kids because the wood chips absorbthe water," says ValbonaShkambi, a daycare educator.

Her colleague, Yuko Kobayashi, explains that there is a another park nearby that they often visitbut the ground under its play structuresis covered in sand, which makes for a mess on any day but especially after a rainfall.

"It's safer here, too, when they fall. It's better,"Kobayashi says.

The park at the corner of Beaumont andde l'peavenues inaugurated last fall in honour of Moore, a six-time Stanley Cup winner and Montreal Canadiens legend wasn't only an addition of green space in the densely populated Parc-Extension neighbourhood, it's also what the city is calling a "sponge park."

The plan is to create these parks all over the city over the next few years to absorb the increasing amount of rainwater due to climate change. Alreadyin recent years, Montreal has had issues managing abundant rainfall overwhelming its sewer system and often ending up, mostly unfiltered, in the St. Lawrence Riveror people's basements.

Dickie Moore is one of six parks the city has already created or revamped to be "resilient." Another in Lachine, Brewster Park, is on its way, as well as a water retention pond coming to Pointe-Saint-Charles in the fall.

The park in Park Ex is almost entirely covered by wild flower gardens designed to please pollinators and other insects. The splash pad at the centre of the park has been strategically placed next to a bed of rocks surrounded by plants and flowers acting as a drain. A wooden walkway hovers above it.

The goal is to mimic natural hydrological processes, explains Sophie Brard, an engineer in the city's water department.

"You try to return the water to the nature instead of putting it in sewers and grey infrastructure," such as roadways,Brardsays.

The park also acts as a reprieve on hot days, its greenery cooling the area's temperature and the splash pad an immediate way to beat the heat.

WATCH| A city of Montreal engineer explains how this park is about more than play:

Montreal aims to curb flooding with 'sponge' parks like this

12 months ago

Duration 2:19

Dickie Moore Park is not only a community gathering space, it also diverts torrents of rain away from overwhelmed storm sewers.

Chlo Fredette, a project manager for Qubec Vert, an advocacy group formore green infrastructure, says that though the parks are a step in the right direction, Montreal has a lot of catching up to do.

"Every park should be a sponge park,"Fredettesaid. "It's a great start, but we can do much more. The drainage system, how it's built right now, is not sustainable for really big storm water events."

For Shkambi and Kuboyashi, though, the park is a welcome addition to their workday. At lunchtime, the tables in the park also fill up with nearby office workers.

"It's clean, it's comfortable, it's quiet. We love it," Shkambi says, adding thecolourful mural adorning the two buildings lining the parkis another nice feature.