BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report
The recently released draft of the new Montreal regional flood map is raising alarm bells across the Greater Montreal area, but nowhere are they sounding louder than in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
The new map almost doubles the number of buildings identified as being in flood risk zones to just over 15,500 – this represents almost 20,000 households – potentially negatively affecting $9.9 billion in property values across the vast territory that is the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal. But about $2 billion worth of that property is located in Vaudreuil-Dorion, says the city’s mayor Guy Pilon.
“It’s major, major for us,” said Pilon in an interview last week with The 1019 Report.
The draft map, which was unveiled Sept. 30, includes a wide swath of properties along the various waterfronts in the CMM’s territory, which includes 82 municipalities on and around the island of Montreal.
In Vaudreuil-Dorion, it now includes areas that encompass not only houses, but schools, municipal water filtrations plants and the entire Cité des Jeunes campus along St. Charles Avenue.
“Everyone is in a panic,” Pilon said, referring to owners of properties affected by the new flood zone.
The map is based on what that CMM refers to as the “new regulatory framework” that reflects the guidelines dictated by provincial authorities.
Pilon said the impact on his city – about $2 billion – just doesn’t make sense.
Since the draft was unveiled Pilon has been receiving phone calls from homeowners who are slated to possibly be included in zones of flood risk.
Anyone who has a mortgage due for renewal is worried, Pilon said, as he blasted both the CMM and provincial authorities for how the redrawing of the flood zones is being handled. Some homeowners want to know if their mortgages will be cancelled if they cannot get insurance, while others worry that they will be left holding mortgages that end up being much larger than what their properties will be worth.
Pilon said his city is preparing a memorandum to send to the regional authority, and has already spoken to Quebec Municipal Affairs Minister Andrée Laforest, explaining how not only homeowners will be affected but how any drop in property values will affect municipal taxation revenues.
“This is high-level stupidity,” Pilon said of how the redrawing of the map was done without consulting affected municipalities.
If the map is ratified and comes into force next spring, Pilon has suggested that the province establish a new insurance fund for homeowners, similar to its no-fault insurance program for drivers. In this way, owners of properties that will be added to the widening flood zone will be able to obtain insurance coverage in order to protect their assets and secure mortgage renewals and approvals.
The proposed draft of the map is based on guidelines set out by the province. In June public consultations were launched on the map, which includes four zones of flood risk – from low to moderate, to high and very high risk. In unveiling the map, the CMM also released a memo that calls on the provincial government to change its flood-management regulations, which outline what can or cannot be built in the various flood zones as well as what types of renovations property owners in those zones can undertake.
Among the changes the CMM is calling for is a reassessment of the standards of how a residential building can be changed in order to provide greater flexibility, in particular in moderate- and high-risk zones. The regional authority is also calling for the creation of management plans for flood-prone areas.