The City of Sutton, in Estrie, has decided to suspend all new real estate development on the mountainside due to the water shortage that threatens its residents.
For years, the City multiplied the granting of building permits to promoters who smelled good deals in this resort area. Its population has increased by 13% over the past six years, from 4,000 to 4,500 people.
But Sutton was drying up as it prospered. Signs of water shortages first showed up in the winter, during weekends or spring breaks, when skiers flocked. Then, more and more frequently, the lack of water also became apparent in summer. “Unheard of,” says Mayor Robert Benoit, elected last November after a particularly arid summer season.
“With the lack of rain we have experienced, neighbors of mine, who have always lived with shallow wells, realized that they were dry. There was no more water: it had never happened since 1850”, he explains.
In recent years, the water supply on the mountain has decreased significantly, a reality that the mayor attributes to climate change. Less water runs off and permeates the earth, so the resource must be fetched from ever greater depths.
“My neighbors wanted to dig artesian wells. Well diggers would say, “Generally, at 200 feet, you’re okay.” People were going up to 400 feet and there was not enough water, recalls Robert Benoit. Hydraulic fracturing had to be done! It got us thinking about the water table, and we realized it was shifting due to overdevelopment. »
The drought also affects the heights of Sutton, where about 3000 people draw from surface water which is struggling more and more, here too, to meet demand. “There is a very large population in the mountain,” said Mayor Benoit. It was mostly vacationers, people who had a second home which they took advantage of in the winter, to ski, and who used it more or less in the summer. The pandemic, he adds, has caused people to come to Sutton almost permanently. »
With, as a consequence, water consumption which increases “considerably”, notes the mayor. To the point where, currently, almost every drop counts. “We are in a situation of balance between supply and demand,” said the elected official.
Alarming picture
A report commissioned by the town hall and presented on Wednesday paints a picture of an alarming situation in the mountains. As the available water is no longer sufficient during periods of low water or high consumption, the Tetra Tech study evokes the possibility of connecting the system that supplies the mountain to the aqueduct of the village located below, in the valley, and which feeds off the groundwater.
Meshing the two systems would power 400 new mountainside gates — but the bill to connect the two networks is $15 million, according to the report. An unmanageable financial burden for Sutton, whose 2022 operating budget provides for 13.
The short-term solution, according to the mayor, is to follow the report’s recommendation and suspend the construction of the 760 housing units planned on the mountain. “Before drawing more water from the groundwater, I want to make sure that its recharge capacity will be sufficient to supply new developments. »
The municipality does not intend to stop there. It is studying different possibilities to reduce the water consumption of its population, in particular by requiring the installation of efficient equipment in new homes.
Mayor Robert Benoit does not exclude any option, even mentioning the installation of water meters to price consumption. “It’s like with gasoline: when the price goes up, people consume less of it and even think about getting an electric car,” he explains.
A problem soon generalized?
Mayor Benoit wants Sutton to avoid the fate of Saint-Lin–Laurentides, which has “made overdevelopment without taking into account the recharge capacity of water sources”.
The elected official also believes that the challenge facing his municipality today awaits the majority of Quebec cities in a much less distant future than many believe. “In Quebec, we imagined that we would never have problems with blue gold, but it is a general problem, he concludes. We have to face it, we have no choice. Putting on blinders and putting your head in the sand is unfortunately what the Town of Sutton has been doing for the past 20 years. »