Struggling for years with chronic boil water advisories, municipalities in the province deplore the heavy administrative steps they must take with Quebec to tackle this problem. Access to drinking water has also turned into an electoral issue in some places. Overview.
Even today, 25 municipalities located in ten regions of the province have to deal with recurring boil water advisories, in many cases for several years, according to a count made by The duty based on data from the Quebec Ministry of the Environment.
This is particularly the case with the Domaine-en-Haut mobile home park, located in Vaudreuil-Dorion, on the outskirts of Montreal. A boil water advisory has been in effect there since 2010 and currently concerns 35 residences. The municipality is now awaiting the necessary funding from Quebec to build a pipe that will, within a few years, connect the city’s water network to this remote sector.
“For Domaine-en-Haut, the problem was not the desire to carry out the project, but to persist with the Ministry of the Environment”, launches the mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Guy bluntly. Pilon, who deplores having had to “fight” in recent years with this ministry and that of municipal affairs to try to solve the drinking water problem in this sector. “There is something aberrant about this. “
Red tape
The president of the Union of Quebec municipalities, Daniel Côté, faces a similar problem in the city of Gaspé, of which he is mayor. This includes the village of L’Anse-au-Griffon, which has 45 residences struggling with permanent boil water advisories for more than 10 years.
“The L’Anse-au-Griffon file, I can’t wait for it to be settled,” concedes Mr. Côté, whose municipality intends to opt for the construction of a water treatment plant for this village, after having dug wells in vain to try to find drinking water in the basement of this sector, at the request of the Ministry of the Environment.
” The procedures [avec le gouvernement] are so long that it makes no sense, ”deplores the mayor of the municipality of L’Île-d’Anticosti, John Pineault. The latter still believes that he will succeed in completing within a few years the construction of a new filtration plant to finally provide drinking water to all its residents, if the money from Quebec is there. . “At least next year, it’s a provincial election, so we can have hope that it will be done,” he drops.
In writing, the Ministry of the Environment reminds that municipalities wishing to update their drinking water production and distribution facilities must ensure that the projects submitted comply with the Environment Quality Act and propose solutions to “produce and distribute water of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the present and future needs of the population served”.
Its spokesperson, Frédéric Fournier, however, assures us that the ministry has put in place measures to help municipalities file full authorization applications, which should help reduce the time it takes for them to be processed by the ministry. Alternative drinking water supply solutions are also currently being studied in order to meet the needs of municipalities where “conventional solutions would not be financially viable,” adds Mr. Fournier.
A wind of hope
Recent government investments are also giving hope to some municipalities that their residents will soon no longer have to boil tap water to avoid falling ill.
This is particularly the case of Warden, a municipality in Montérégie struggling with boil water advisories since 2003. Last June, it received a government grant of $ 5.1 million which financed, in part, the construction of a processing plant which should come into operation in the coming weeks.
“We must persist and we get there,” says the mayor of Warden, Philip Tétrault, who expects all of the 350 or so residents to have access to the “new” drinking water network of the municipality “of here two months ”.
After a quarter of a century of waiting, the municipality of Pointe-Lebel is also approaching the time when it will be able to offer drinking water to all its residents. The first shovelful of earth in the construction of a connecting pipe to the Baie-Comeau aqueduct network is scheduled for 2023. “It is sure that it will not be done in a year, but at least it will be. started, ”said the general manager of Pointe-Lebel, Christian Matte, on the phone, who recognizes that boil water advisories are“ very restrictive ”for residents of the municipality.
An electoral issue
In East Broughton, a small municipality of Chaudière-Appalaches whose mayor, François Baril, does not represent himself, the question of access to drinking water has interfered in the electoral campaign, which opposes two candidates for mayor in their thirties. The water has been subject to a boil water advisory for several months due to equipment failure. It has also been used in the past for contamination problems which have since been resolved, assures the municipality.
“This is one of the reasons for my return [en politique municipale]. I find it hard to understand that we are still on a boil water advisory, ”says Kaven Mathieu, who was mayor of the municipality from 2009 to 2018. In recent years, East Broughton has nevertheless benefited from government investments of a few millions. dollars to renovate its drinking water infrastructure, he recalls.
“Nobody wants to wash their clothes with yellow water”, for his part launches the other candidate for mayor, Jean-Benoit Létourneau, who also promises to make the lifting of the boil water advisories a of his “priorities” if he is elected in November. The municipality, for its part, provided To have to, last Wednesday, that the most recent boil water advisory would be lifted “in the days to come”, after work to repair the broken equipment in question.
Quebec has also set itself the target of ensuring access to quality drinking water for all municipalities in the province by 2030.
However, according to a report published last February by the Center for Expertise and Research in Urban Infrastructures, 4,707 km of drinking water pipes in Quebec municipalities are considered to be at “high or very high” risk of failure. Quebec will therefore have to invest billions of dollars if it wishes to renovate them.
However, “it’s been 15 years, 20 years” that the group of experts Network Environment pleads for “massive investments in water”, laments its CEO, Christine Pelchat. “And that doesn’t happen. “