The fence stretches from Sunnyside Pool all the way to the Palais Royale, erected by city crews after yellow tape failed to keep out determined joggers.
The reason for the blockade? Sewage.
Tuesday's massive storm caused an enormous backup in Toronto's plumbing, leaving behind a disgusting mess in the west end.
A portion of the western beaches at
Lake Shore Boulevard and Parkside Drive is flooded with foul-smelling water. City crews first said the liquid wasn't sewage, but storm water. By mid-afternoon, they had changed their tune.
"What you have now is a spillage of storm water and sewage in the park area and on the street," confirms Michael D'Andrea from the City of Toronto.
"We don't know to the extent of the mixture between sewage as well as storm water," he added.
Tuesday evening's severe thunderstorm caused extensive damage in the area. The backwash flooded a children's playground and wading pool and lifted the wooden planks of the boardwalk causing it to buckle in the Sunnyside Park area.
The wind and rain even lifted a massive cement slab that's part of a catch-basin. That slab weighs five tons and city crews don't have a piece of equipment strong enough to lift it. They had to bring in a crane to move the block back into place.
A sewer cover weighing about 120 pounds was also lifted off the ground during the wind gusts.
Crews are now testing the sand for E. Coli and other bacteria.
"I'm going to go wash off my sneakers," commented one man who had inadvertently walked through the park.
"What I think is really sad about it is this keeps happening over and over again," lamented Jan Deaus, who lives in the area.
"The storm sewers and the sanitary sewers in this section of the city are connected together still, because it was so long ago. So every time we have a huge flood or big rainstorm or whatever, all of this sewage comes up out of the manholes," she continued.
"In an ideal world, we should be putting a higher priority in terms of getting rid of some of these combined sewer systems. The combined sewer systems are going to cause damage not only to these park facilities but also to places like the hospital across the street, the homes and residences and buildings," agreed Frank Zechner, Executive Director of Ontario Sewer & Watermains.
"I'm sure it's a very complicated issue," Deaus said. "I'm not putting blame on anybody's shoulders, but I really do think that there's something that should be done about it."
And Zechner thinks he knows what that is: "I think the city should show some leadership in terms of putting the combined sewer system replacement as a higher priority," he claimed.
But the cash-strapped city says their system just couldn't handle Tuesday's massive storm, and that flooding like this is a rare
occurrence.
The water levels in Lake Ontario were already high before Tuesday evening and the strong storm caused lake water to rush over its barriers. The Ministry of the Environment was called to the scene early Wednesday and the cleanup could take days and repairs could take weeks.
Sunnyside Pool remained closed Wednesday.
Its basement was flooded during the storm.
Sunnyside Beach is also closed. For more information on beach conditions, you can call the Toronto Beach Hotline at
416-392-7161.
And to add insult to injury a lightning strike knocked out a traffic light at the intersection of Parkside and Lake Shore and police officers are out trying to control traffic at the busy spot, which at one point was also flooded with nearly two feet of water
The storm dumped about 30 millimetres of rain on some neighbourhoods around Toronto.
The huge amount of precipitation caused some chaos in other parts of the city and flooded out several roads including parts of the Don Valley Parkway south of Bloor and the intersections of
Oakwood and Davenport and
Leslie and Eastern Avenue.
The storm even claimed a life when a man was
apparently struck by lightning when he took refuge from the rain under a tree at Christie Pits Park at Christie and Bloor Streets
Below is a gallery of some of the area's post-storm clean-ups. To see some other great storm pictures,
click here.