By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban
St. Laurent council, during a special council meeting, passed a bylaw enabling measures to protect buildings from floods, including restricting the use of basements of “sensitive institutions,” such as schools, long-term care homes and daycare centres.
The borough was especially affected by two summer floods in fairly quick succession that took place last year, particularly in the Thimens-Place Vertu area.
A statement says this took place even as St. Laurent has taken measures against flooding in the past 40 years, including retention basins, sponge parks, bio-retention areas, greening, resilient and draining street landscaping.
“We want to have a variety of measures in place, but to also allow citizens to know what tools are available to them,” Mayor Alan DeSousa told The Suburban.
One provision of the bylaw concerns basements of local buildings. Regarding basement residences, of which there are many in the borough, “given the current housing crisis, this option will be maintained and it is even allowing the creation of new basement dwellings, provided that flooding risks are reduced to a minimum by various devices such as watertight doors or other water barriers.
But the same does not apply to what the borough calls vulnerable institutions, such as schools, youth protection centres, daycare centres and long-term seniors residences.
The bylaw states “when a sensitive use occupies all or part of the basement of a building, the basement space may accommodate facilities such as administrative offices, storage, or areas reserved for employees, but it may not be intended for or open to clientele.”
DeSousa told The Suburban that basements can fill up with water quickly when heavy rains take place.
“So we wanted to make sure that any activity involving vulnerable clientele, or where they may be sleeping or playing, whether they be young or old, those who have mobility issues, that they are not put at risk,” he explained. “We didn’t want people to be caught off guard.”
Could institutions take the same measures for their basements as property owners opening new basement apartments?
“They would have to visit us, and we would have to be satisfied, but because it’s institutional, we thought it prudent to be able to protect the general population. If you’re living in your own house and you’ve taken all the measures to protect yourself, it becomes a personal choice, and even then, we don’t recommend that young or elderly people or those with mobility issues be housed in the basement.”
Regarding underground parking, the bylaw amendment says, “from now on, downward-sloping access to underground indoor parking facilities in new constructions will have to be provided within the building itself, except for two-family (h2) and multiplex (h3) buildings.”
As for driveways, all new ones “will have to be designed to prevent rainwater from the street from flowing onto private property. A small mound or a slope towards the street will therefore be required for all vehicle accessways.”
The entire bylaw can be seen at portail-m4s.s3.montreal.ca/pdf/RCA08-08-0001-175%20-%20Second%20projet%20de%20r%C3%A8glement%20VS3.pdf?VersionId=vDHNQxvpiuKSMhjHjQDIeqmLAlkxaCD. n