Dundas homeowners heartbroken as more than 20 trees felled in their 'home paradise' for rain cleanup

One of Teresa Huynh's favourite things about where she lives on Middletown Road in Dundas is all of the trees surrounding her house.

But this weekend, at least 20 of the stately trunks have fallen over as crews work to clear the CN Rail line behind the property. It's breaking her and her husband's hearts, she said.

"We woke up to see that a landslide occurred," she said Sunday morning. "We just couldn't digest the amount of destruction."

It started Saturday, after 82 millimetres of rainhit Hamilton this week.CN Rail crews showed up at Huynh's door saying they needed to get to their rail line behind her house.

They accessed the rail line property through the private property of Huynh and neighbours.

A spokesman for CN Rail wasn't able to confirm specifics about the ongoing efforts and any collateral damage, but said it is an "emergency repair."

And just as city workers have been working to shore up mudslides on the Mountain accesses, the rail workers appear to have discovered weakness in the soil.

Before Huynh knew it, there were excavators on site. By Sunday, the embankment looked like a landslide and there were dozens of trees falling down.

"We thought it was repair work, not just excavation," she said. "They just completely demolished 50-to-60-year-old trees."

'It's definitely a spring of springs'

Patrick Waldron, a spokesman for CN Rail, said keeping railway tracks safe is the company's top priority.

"There are crews that are doing work on the railwayembankment due to the large amounts of rain that have come through the region," Waldron said.

"The first priority of the crews is the safety of the embankment for the safe operation of all train traffic."

Huynh and her husband have asked CN to clarify their plans going forward. "We just feel that CN didn't have a plan in place," she said.

The CN workers told Huynh they'd be bringing in engineers from Montreal, she said, to assess the situation. Waldron couldn't confirm those details.

The property isn't formally part of a protected conservation area, explained Gord Costi, the director of conservation areas for the Hamilton Conservation Authority.

But Huynh's property does fall under the city of Hamilton's "conservation zoning," Costi said. That means if a property owner wanted to do work on the property, the authority would be asked to comment on the proposed change.

A conservation authority worker from its watershed planning and engineering department went out to the property to take a look at Spring Creek and any damage it was sustaining "to make sure we don't have any flooding concerns," Costi said.

"As it stands the property and the trees in question, it's well over a kilometre south of Christie Lake," Costi said.

"It's definitely a spring of springs in the Hamilton area and we're acutely aware of that across our watershed," Costi said. "We're waiting as much as everyone else as things kind of turn. They [CN] have to keep this thing operating."

Still, Costi said, it "never would be" a desirable outcome to see trees lost in a landslide.

kelly.bennett@cbc.ca