DEBORAH POWELL
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE
OTTAWA RIVER – The Ottawa River Concertation Table (TCO) held a water stakeholders’ assembly online, May 28, bringing together close to 30 participants. The targeted zone associated with the TCO’s work begins upstream of the Première-Chute dam in Notre- Dame-du-Nord, Témiscamingue, and ends downstream of the Carillon dam in Saint-André-d’Argenteuil. The zone includes the waterway and a 1,500 m strip of land adjacent to the river on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River.
TCO’s mission is to “promote discussion and consultation between stakeholders to attain concerted objectives related to issues concerning the Ottawa River”, with the vision to “place the Ottawa River back at the heart of the decisions and concerns of stakeholders who have an influence on its integrity”.
The TCO is currently working on creating an integrated management plan for the Ottawa River. Prioritized issues are: floods, impairment of water quality, degradation of wetlands, degradation of wildlife and plant habitats.
Janie Larivière, TCO coordinator, summarized the specific objectives identified for each issue, explaining that work is underway with the Minister of Environment to establish measurable indicators for each objective. The action plan is scheduled to be ready in December 2024. Between July and October 2024, the TCO will take a draft of the plan on a regional tour of stakeholders for further consultation.
Four short presentations were part of the meeting. Larissa Holman, Ottawa Riverkeeper’s director of science and policy, provided a rundown of the new Watershed Report Card the organization recently released that gave a “C” for the health of the river. Holman emphasized the inter-relationship of indicators used to determine the result, but bottom line, human-driven changes are degrading the Ottawa River.
Jacob Demers, L’Isle-aux- Allumettes native and conservation programs specialist at Ducks Unlimited Canada, described conservation and protection measures taken in the area of the Grand Marais on Calumet Island through land purchases and private conservation. He underlined the importance of the Outaouais as home to some of the greatest biodiversity in the province. The Grand Marais has great ecological value, particularly because of its strategic location on the periphery of the Ottawa River, a high-priority area for the conservation of waterfowl and their habitats.
Jean-François Houle, conservation and education manager, Parc national de Plaisance, provided an overview of actions taken in response to challenges facing the park such as blue-green algae, invasive species and loss of tree cover due to ash die-off. He emphasized the relationship between the park’s health and what’s happening in surrounding areas, noting they have great collaboration with municipalities on that front. Maintaining forested corridors leading to other protected areas is also a concern. From the MRC d’Argenteuil, Josée Lapointe and Geneviève Grenier spoke about the Argenteuil Digital History Trail that invites users to discover the history of the area between Grenville and Carillon on the Ottawa River that was once a 21 km long series of rapids called Quenechouan (big rapids) by the Algonquin people. Renamed Long- Sault by the French, the rapids were swallowed up by tons of water in 1962 with the flooding of more than 825 hectares of land when the Carillon power station was built. The project offers a digital journey of the Long- Sault corridor from pre-contact times to today, using texts, maps, and photos.