Bradford is taking new steps to prevent another flooding disaster in the Holland Marsh.   

They're asking for control of some dikes that failed this month, causing millions of dollars in crop damage.  

Other than a partially submerged tractor, there aren't many signs that land in the marsh was once a farm, not a lake. You can't see any of the crops that have been wiped out by the second dike breach in less than a month.

Frank Jonkman is the drainage superintendent for Bradford West Gwillimbury. He's in charge of checking and repairing dikes that keep water from Lake Simcoe from flooding into the Holland Marsh. But he says the dike that let out the water that’s now the problem isn’t the town's responsibility.

“This system on this side is not a municipal drain,” he says. “It was petitioned to become a municipal drain in the 1950s but the process was never completed and the dike was constructed privately.”

Not only was the dike constructed privately, it's also managed by the farmers and not checked by town staff, Jonkman says. However, he did inspect it three weeks ago, after the first break.

“We've done some preliminary review of the dikes and they're in poor shape and again there are a number of factors that contribute to that,” he says, “but the bottom line is the integrity of the dikes has been compromised.”

Still, Jonkman says there wasn't much the farmers could have done to prevent this because the damage was being done beneath the surface of the water.

“I think the farmers have done their work trying to protect the land but again you can't protect what you can't see,” he says.

The aging dikes are constructed out of natural materials like clay, and now the town is petitioning the province to give them control over these dikes so they can rebuild the entire system and prevent something like this from happening again.

While the town works on replacing the whole dike system, the breach that caused this flooding will be temporarily repaired so they can begin pumping water out of the land.

That process will take about seven or eight days, but it could be another two years until this farmland is back to normal.