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Northwest Scarborough homeowners whose streets are prone to basement floodings will get some help from the City of Toronto next year.

The city likely will spend millions on new pipes, rubber manhole plugs and other measures to reduce flood risks in an area between Victoria Park Avenue and Kennedy Road hit fairly hard by the storm of Aug. 15, 2005.

But while residents are being asked to make improvements of their own, many at the Stephen Leacock Recreation Centre for an open house this week said they weren't interested in one the city recommends.

The city says downspouts connected to sanitary sewers through weeping tiles of homes contribute to flooding, as well as increasing stress on Toronto's river systems.

Display boards showing the streets under study in Agincourt had black dots marking reported basement floods. Almost all of those were on streets where houses are decades old and downspouts were not disconnected.

On the few streets where homes were built recently with disconnected spouts, black dots were rare.

The city will pay up to 80 per cent (to a $500 maximum) of costs for disconnections, so that downspouts run to a splash pad or a rainbarrel on a driveway or lawn.

But Rudi Whitticopp. a resident and an engineer, said houses in his neighbourhood, with their small flat lawns, are not designed to handle surface runoff from disconnected spouts.

"Half my property is roof," he said.

"If my neighbour does it, I'll get his water in my basement. If I do it, he'll get mine."

Twice this year during storms, Whitticopp said, water has gotten into his home through three separate windows.

David Tay, living in his home for 34 years, developed a similar problem. Water got into his house three times in the last year through a window well. The last time, both he and his son were outside, bailing the water out with a bucket.

Last week, Tay found the problem when workers dug down to his weeping tile; instead of a four-inch pipe he expected below his window well, there was only gravel filled in with silt. It cost him $1,200 to fix, he said.

Other residents said the city must do more to maintain local catch basins, which are cleaned twice a year, so they don't clog up as often.

Philip Cheung, a Toronto Water stormwater management specialist, said the city is assuming it can get a certain percentage of downspouts disconnected but he agreed most houses in the area weren't built in a way that compliments disconnection.

Agincourt is in the second round of areas studied for flooding solutions.

The first areas, all in North York and considered the most urgently in need, were studied last year and are getting close to $100 million in improvements, Cheung said.

The city will also inspect sewer pipe connections at no cost and also offers deep discounts to residents on backflow valves and sump pumps through its Basement Flooding Protection Subsidy Program. Call 416-395-6376 to learn more.