Anxiety growing around province’s yet-to-be-released flood maps: MRC says draft maps are ‘still months out’
Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist
Pontiac’s mayors and MRC staff have been receiving questions from residents about when the province’s new flood maps will be released, and what the implications of these maps will be for people who own property in or near a flood zone.
“We’ve been getting so many calls from people wondering about the maps,” said Kari Richardson, environment manager for the MRC Pontiac. She said the release of draft maps in the Montreal area last summer caused a stir of anxieties around what the maps would look like in the Pontiac.
But the update, from her end, is that there is no update, and the release of the draft maps for this region is expected sometime this summer.
“[The province] is doing a systematic update by region and, as they can, they’re publishing new maps,” she said.
“We’re still months out, and then there will be a public consultation period for those maps,” she said.
For several years now, the Quebec government has been working to overhaul and modernize the mapping of flood zones across the province.
The new maps will update which areas are considered to be at risk of flooding, will change how the flood risk information is presented, and will include new regulations to be implemented by municipalities around how land in flood zones can be used.
“For resilient land use planning, Quebec, like many jurisdictions around the world, will determine flood zones using information on past floods and on the possible evolution of anticipated floods up to the end of the century,” Josée Guimond, a spokesperson for the province’s environment ministry, wrote in an email to THE EQUITY.
“The calculation of future floods is based on simulation tools and greenhouse gas emission projection scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Guimond said it’s estimated the new flood maps will cover between 30 and 40 per cent more ground than the current maps, and that the number of homes that fall within these expanded zones could grow from 22,000 to just over 77,000.
She emphasized this estimate will likely be revised downwards as new knowledge becomes available from the mapping work, and that the number of dwellings affected in a given area will vary according to its occupancy density.
Richardson said the City of Gatineau lead the charge on developing the new maps for the Pontiac region, with contributions from the MRC, but that these maps still need to be approved by the Ministry of Environment before they’re adopted as the new flood zones.
She said if the maps Gatineau submitted are approved, they will offer a far more accurate account of how flooding occurs across the territory. This, she says, is a welcome update to the current maps, which were developed based on the floods of 2017 and 2019, as well as on flood levels indicated the MRC’s current land use plan.
“Because [the current maps] take into consideration several things, that’s why it’s a little bit broad [ . . .]They’re not quite as detailed, which they will be in the coming versions.”
The maps were originally expected to be released last spring, but to date, only maps for the Greater Montreal area have been published.
New regulations for different risk zones
The updated maps will present flooding data in two new ways. First, the assessment of risk in each flood zone will be presented differently. Rather than describing a zone’s likelihood of flooding as a one in twenty year or one in one hundred year chance, a framing of flood probability that is often misunderstood, the new maps will present four different categories of flood zone: very high, high, medium, or low risk.
These categories will detail not only the probability a property will flood, but also the depth at which it will likely flood.
Depending on which category a property falls in, different regulations will apply.
Under the proposed regulations, property owners in all categories can replace a roof, change windows, and do interior renovations. Those who end up in the very high risk category would not be allowed to build a new house or rebuild one that has been destroyed, if the damages cost more than 50 per cent of what it would cost to replace the building. Renovations to make the home more flood resistant, however, would be possible.
Property owners who find themselves in the high-risk category would also not be allowed to erect new buildings, but would be allowed to rebuild after a flood.
Last fall, the province held consultations on these draft regulations, which are now being reviewed, and according to the province, are set to be released this spring, ahead of the maps.
‘A wait-and-see game’
Fort Coulonge mayor Christine Francoeur says she feels the process of rolling out these flood maps has taken too long.
“It’s true that as a municipality we’re very concerned about that,” she said. “We lost 24 houses [in recent floods] – one of them was just a few months ago declared to be destroyed.”
She is anxious to learn what her municipality will be allowed to do with these 24 lots, which the province bought from homeowners and resold to the municipality for the price of one dollar.
“We have the [sewage and water] infrastructure right there. If we can’t rebuild on those lots, it’s wasted for us,” she said.
She’s also been hearing from residents who’ve experienced flooding but haven’t lost their homes, who are anxious about what they will be allowed to do with their property going forward.
“There are a lot of questions going on and nobody’s got the answers yet. It’s just a wait-and-see game,” Francoeur said.
“I feel for the people in town because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Personally I think it’s taking too long for this flood zone map to come out. It just makes people more and more anxious.”
Pontiac MNA André Fortin says he’s just as in the dark as Pontiac residents when it comes to the details of these maps, and echoed Francoeur’s concerns with how these new maps will affect residents’ properties.
“Will it mean they’ll have trouble insuring their home? Will it mean they’ll have trouble selling their home? Will it mean the areas that have been developed will get a greater area in flood maps?” he said.
“It’s almost like there’s a tornado coming through town, but we’re speculating because we don’t know the extent of damage it’s going to cause.”