flooding

Sophie Kuijper Dickson – LJI reporter

A new initiative launched this spring will see the MRC Pontiac develop a plan to protect residents, property and infrastructure throughout its 18 municipalities from flooding.

The MRC is teaming up with Outaouais environmental agency CREDDO to lead a working group made up of staff, local officials, and water management experts that will meet every few months over a two-year period to build an action plan based on needs identified by communities affected by flooding. The group’s first meeting was June 16.

The plan will work to lay out strategies for implementing resilient, durable solutions that will increase the safety of people and the protection of property across the territory, and aims to serve as a guide for long-term adaptation to flooding rather than detail short-term emergency response plans for flooding.

“The 2017 and 2019 floods hit our communities hard, but they also strengthened our resolve to act,” said Pontiac warden Jane Toller in the press release announcing this project.

“With the support of the Government of Québec and the commitment of our partners, this adaptation plan will help us protect our citizens, our built heritage and our farmland while preparing a more resilient Pontiac for future generations.”

Myriam Gemme, CREDDO’s coordinator for climate change adaptation projects, said the MRC’s territory is vulnerable to three separate kinds of flooding that the action plan will work to address: spring flooding, flash flooding from rain storms, and flooding caused by ice jams on rivers.

“One of the first steps of climate change adaptation is to identify the vulnerabilities on the territory and then after we have more knowledge about that and we can plan some solutions for adaptation,” Gemme said.

“It can be related to the fact that some [towns] are very close to a river [ . . . ] It can also be related to certain people that would be more vulnerable, like people that live alone,” she explained, listing examples of vulnerabilities that could be identified.

“There is also a new mapping being made by the government, so with those new flood zones we’ll be able to identify the specific locations where there are more risks of flood, and maybe in those locations we can have more drastic solutions.”

MRC Pontiac environment manager Kari Richardson said the MRC passed a resolution in May 2023, following significant flooding that spring in which 300 homes were affected, asking the provincial government for help adapting its territory to be more resilient to flooding.

“I think what the MRC was really envisioning was that there could be some collaborative work to see what the problematic areas were with regards to flooding and to see how they could be addressed,” Richardson said.
In response, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing offered $50,000 to help the MRC develop an adaptation plan, with support from CREDDO.

“It’s to hear from people who are affected by flooding on what kinds of supports their communities need to be more resilient to flooding. [ . . . ] This is coming from the local municipalities. Whatever we come up with in this working group is what we are hoping we can address.”

Gemme said possible solutions that could be included in the final action plan would be moving buildings, performing renovations on buildings to elevate them above flood levels, or adapting territorial planning to include more green spaces that can act as sponges during flooding.

“We know the rivers can move and flood, so it is more and more true that the natural areas act like a sponge so they help to hold the water so it won’t go in more urban areas,” Gemme said.

The final plan will be complete with a guide as to where to find funding for the identified solutions, and a list of who is responsible for implementing the solutions.

“We know right now floods are the climate hazard the most costly to the state,” Gemme said. “So right now there is a lot of different funding available for flood adaptation.”