Open letter to Mrs. Sophie Brochu, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hydro-Québec
I learn this week in The duty that Hydro-Québec intends to demolish an inventoried heritage building located on the site of the Hemming generating station in Drummondville, despite the provisions of the Cultural Heritage Act, the Crown corporation citing its “immunity” to justify such a breach .
I grew up near the Hemming power station, in the small village of Kingsbury, on the banks of the Salmon River (yes, yes, in the singular). Besides, I don’t know anyone who has ever seen a salmon in this river, nor anyone who can explain why the river was named that way, since in theory, the salmon go no further than Quebec City, given its preference for cold water.
What can easily be explained, however, is the absence of other fish in the river. The reason ? TheSaint-François river is developed not far from its mouth, to supply the Hemming power station, preventing fish from going up it to the Saumon river, which flows into the Saint-François at the height of Melbourne. Archival photos dating from before the construction of the dam show that fishing was practiced abundantly at the time, in Kingsbury.
This invites us to question the green label systematically attached to hydroelectricity.
And that produced at the Hemming plant is not the only Hydro-Quebec activity that has had harmful consequences for the environment in the region. In 1998, taking advantage of the post-crisis panic of the ice storm, the state-owned company announced the construction of a 735-kilovolt high-voltage line between Hertel substations in Montérégie and Des Cantons in Estrie to secure the network. electric transportation in preparation for a possible second freezing rain storm.
The government of Lucien Bouchard adopted a series of decrees to authorize the project without holding public consultations and without carrying out environmental impact studies, expropriating at the same time 200 owners, including 50 in Le Val-Saint-François , the region where my parents had settled. A little later, journalists from the To have to revealed that Hertel-Des Cantons was intended instead to reassure American customers of Hydro-Québec, who demanded an additional transmission line to secure exports to the United States.
The Coalition of Citizens of Val-Saint-François fiercely fought the project, going so far as to win a decisive victory against the government in the Superior Court of Quebec in 1999. Judge Jeannine M. Rousseau declared the decrees justifying the construction of Hertel-Des Cantons “illegal, inapplicable and inoperative” and ordered Hydro-Québec to stop the work. Lucien Bouchard responded to the judgment with a special law and the line was completed in 2004, destroying ancient forests and butchering agricultural land.
All this to tell you that a government corporation should not believe itself above the law or force the realization of its projects in defiance of social acceptability (there would of course be a lot to say about the relationship of ‘Hydro-Québec with Aboriginal communities, I suggest the excellent test Against colonialism on steroidsof Zebedee Nungak, signatory of the James Bay Agreement).
Preserving the Hemming power station house as a witness to history would be a good way to remind us that all development has a price (human, social, ecological). And to initiate a beginning of repair with the inhabitants of the region who sacrificed their land for a high voltage line which was not necessary, it would be the least that this heritage building could be put at the service of the community.