Fredericton will be taking steps to reduce flooding in the city after a weekend downpour caused storm drains to back up.

The city saw more than 80 millimetres of rainfall on Saturday.

Crews were dealing with several different areas of localized flooding during the downpour mostly because of leaves blocking storm drains.

'The design that's there now has been there for awhile. So we're going to have to make some changes.'—Dylan Gamble, manager of streets and roads

Dylan Gamble, the city’s manager of streets and roads, said the area around Fisher Field on the city’s north side was flooded because a grate was blocked.

“In the fall, the leaves end up blocking that whole grate system so [the water] doesn't even get into the storm system and it just overflows. It's happened the last two falls where we've had issues like this,” he said.

“We're going to change our design a little bit. The design that's there now has been there for awhile. So we're going to have to make some changes.”

Gamble said crews will have to wait until the water recedes before they can get into the area to assess the situation.

But he said he hopes they can fix the problem this fall.

The city official said residents can help prevent storm drain backups.

“When we do have storms like this, when the leaves are getting caught in catch-basin, it's a great help if residents — if they notice there's going to be backups and stuff — could get down into their properties and scrape off the leaves because of course we can't be everywhere at once,” he said.

The clean-up process is being slowed, Gamble said, because one of the city's two street sweepers is currently down for repairs.