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Posted at 11:00 a.m.
Isn’t the river too polluted to think of making a beach at the Old Port of Montreal? And what about the water basin for swimming in Quebec inaugurated this week?
Jocelyne Lambert, Brossard
Among the collection of old photos kept in the archives of The Pressthere are these that particularly make us dream: images of bathing at the end of the 1930s, at the foot of the Jacques-Cartier bridge.
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PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
A photo taken on July 3, 1936, at the beach on Île Sainte-Hélène, near the Jacques-Cartier bridge. The original caption describes it as follows: “A band of young Montrealers who, yesterday afternoon, forgot the hot pavement for a few hours. »
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PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
The quadruple springboard seen in this photo taken in July 1936, under the Jacques-Cartier bridge, was demolished in the early 1950s.
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PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
The beach on Île Sainte-Hélène, at the end of the 1930s
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The beach on Île Sainte-Hélène, opposite the Old Port, has welcomed swimmers for 30 years. Today, the large concrete parking lot of La Ronde can be proud to offer motorists one of the most beautiful panoramas in the city…
But we digress. Is the river too polluted there to build a beach? Short answer: no. If you don’t swim in the river near the Old Port, it’s mainly because of the lack of safety facilities.
To measure the quality of water for swimming, we check the level of faecal coliforms – the presence of the bacterium E.coli is an indicator that pathogenic bacteria are contaminating the water. These faecal coliforms come from wastewater discharges. Exposure to too high a level of faecal coliforms increases the risk of gastroenteritis.
The presence of other pollutants in the water of the river (heavy metals, pesticides, bird droppings, etc.) is not an obstacle to swimming in Montreal – their concentration is too low to endanger swimmers. The ships, bulk carriers and other container ships that circulate on the river do not so much pollute the water because of their discharges, but mainly because the waves they carry erode the banks.
So what about the rate ofE.coli in the water of the river in Montreal? It is very low. “The water quality is excellent, 90% of the time,” says André Bélanger, of the Rivières Foundation. “It’s the result of municipal water purification work that we did in the 1980s and 1990s.” The quality of the water drops in the hours following a heavy rain because the sewer overflow is thrown into the river. “But 24 hours after the rain, everything is back to normal,” says Mr. Bélanger. And for good reason: with a flow rate of 10,000 m3 to the second, the surplus ofE.coli is quickly diluted.
And it is also because of this strong current that it is difficult to develop beaches in the Montreal region. In Verdun, a dike had to be built so that people could swim in it in safety. Elsewhere, marinas already occupy sites where the current is weaker. The Société du Vieux-Port de Montréal, for its part, considers that it is too dangerous to install a port bath in the sector because of the traffic of cruise ships.
That did not prevent the Old Port of Quebec from finding a safe place to set up such a bath, as you point out.
But the Rivières Foundation, like all those who support it in its campaign to access Montreal’s shores, does not despair. “I’m hopeful we’ll get there,” said André Bélanger. History goes in this direction. »