Feet in the water, once again. Faced with the increased frequency of flooding in Pierrefonds-Roxboro, residents of the Montreal borough are out of breath and are considering leaving, sometimes after having remained in the same place for decades. A heartbreaking choice that testifies to the importance of better supporting the repeated victims of spring floods in their transition to a new living environment, believes an expert and municipal stakeholders.
Residents of rue Lauzon, near Lac des Deux Montagnes, in the west of the island of Montreal, are used to spring flooding. Major floods only occurred at the time, however, every 20 years, say several of them. However, since 2017, this scenario has repeated itself three times, to the point where again this year, the street has turned into a lake, forcing residents of the area to show ingenuity in an attempt to avoid, as much as possible as possible, that their home is flooded.
“Now the floods don’t stop and it’s on an unprecedented scale. So, what do we do ? Me, I can’t do that every two years, ”drops Chantal Jacques. She placed sandbags around her home. She also installed a pump in her basement and carried out earthworks to prevent her house from being invaded by the rising waters.
The duty went aboard a boat to meet the residents of this street, where families have been living in some cases for decades. The place is beautiful, surrounded by trees and peaceful. “We are in the countryside on the island of Montreal,” says Éric Martinez, who has lived in this sector for 33 years. However, the floods have caused him many headaches in recent years. The house he lives with his 77-year-old father was damaged by rising waters in 2017, then again in 2019.
“People say, you should just take the check and let the house be flooded, but it’s not that simple”, says Éric Martinez, in reference to the departure allowance offered during the last major floods to victims wishing to move in an area spared by the spring floods. In 2019, the maximum proposed for a main residence was $250,000, an amount “light years away from the reality of the Montreal real estate market”, notes the head of infrastructure, buildings and asset maintenance at the committee. City executive, Émilie Thuillier.
“If one day we go there [à relocaliser des résidents]the government will have to sit down with the City “to adapt this program to the reality of Montreal”, thus estimates the elected municipal official.
Anxiety and fatigue
In the meantime, “I don’t want to be homeless,” sighs Mr. Martinez, who has thus decided to stay in his house and ” [se] fight”, again this year, by surrounding it with sandbags. “Water always gets in a little, so I make holes in the ground and install pumps to be able to pump the water outside before it goes to the basement,” he continues. , fatigue in the eyes.
In this context, Chantal Jacques and her husband plan to put their home up for sale to move elsewhere in Montreal, hoping to find buyers who will be unconcerned about the fact that this residence is in a flood zone. “I love the place, but we are four generations who have lived here and it has never been like this”, sighs the 55-year-old lady, who says she experiences “a lot of anxiety and distress” due to the floods. repeated challenges it has faced in recent years. “You have to think about how you want to live for the rest of our days,” adds Mme Jacques.
Elsewhere in the borough, a few road links were closed due to the rising waters, but the worst was avoided thanks to the construction of temporary dikes in various sectors, while sandbags were piled up near several properties. “If we didn’t have these systems in place, we would have been flooded in several areas, especially in western Pierrefonds-Roxboro,” notes its mayor, Dimitrios Jim Beis.
However, these operations have a cost, human and material, not negligible. “We spend and we exhaust our employees. Some leave, ”says the municipal councilor for the district of Bois-de-Liesse, Benoit Langevin. The latter is thus calling for the construction of permanent dikes and pumping stations in the borough to offer a “permanent solution” to the floods that occur in this sector.
Sectors “to be transformed”
The new president of the Union of Municipalities of Quebec, Martin Damphousse, believes, however, that beyond the developments aimed at reacting to the floods, cities will have no choice but to consider changing the “vocation” of certain residential areas flooded on a recurring basis, for example to make parks.
The creation of new green spaces, such as the Grand Parc de l’Ouest, where a real estate project was initially to see the light of day, is also part of the City’s strategies aimed at making the metropolis more resistant to spring floods, notes Émilie Thuillier . Because, if we are content to install low walls to protect residential areas along the river from flooding, “the water will go elsewhere”, illustrates the elected official. However, “the river, we cannot move it”, she says.
At a time when “flood damage is increasing” in the province, the specialist in climate risks and adaptation to the Ouranos consortium, Ursule Boyer-Villemaire, also believes that “the band-aid strategy will not be sufficient”. It will be necessary to consider “transforming” certain residential sectors regularly affected by spring floods, to give them a new vocation, she mentions.
Convincing residents to leave their homes could, however, be difficult, concedes the expert, who stresses that the residents concerned must imperatively be consulted to have their say and feel supported in this transition. For Andrew Wurst, who lives on the shores of Lac des Deux Montagnes, the prospect of “giving up his house” is difficult to envisage.
“Would I have bought here if I had known I would be in so much trouble?” I don’t know, says the father, who has spent tens of thousands of dollars to protect his house from rising waters. I would take that into consideration. But I’m here now and my kids love this place. »