Plante administration insensitive to those whose basements were flooded, opposition says

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The Plante administration is showing a lack of compassion to those whose homes were flooded by suggesting they stop using their basements as livable space, the city’s opposition charged Wednesday.

Speaking to The Gazette on Wednesday, Vana Nazarian, the Ensemble Montréal spokesperson on infrastructure issues, said it’s insensitive for people who are dealing with floods to be told their basements should be condemned as habitable spaces in their homes.

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“It’s totally unacceptable,” Nazarian said. “These people are still dealing with flooding and the cleaning up and stress that goes with that.”

Nazarian was reacting to the comments made by Maja Vodanovic, the executive committee member in charge of infrastructure on Monday night. Vodanovic told residents of St-Léonard that perhaps there should no longer be basement residential units in that area, which is prone to flooding.

She made the comments in reaction to numerous complaints from St-Léonard citizens who went to the monthly city council meeting to ask about the damage they suffered as a result of heavy rains on Aug. 9. The citizens have had numerous flooding incidents dating back decades and have petitioned the court for a class-action lawsuit against the city for not improving local infrastructure, including the Lacordaire collector.

“You’re not going to like the answer, because we can’t do anything immediately to improve the situation,” Vodanovic said during the public question period. “For me to say that I can build a retention basin or improve a collector that would settle the problem would be lying to you. We have a drainage plan for the island, and we’re investing where we will have the most impact, but over the next 10 to 20 years it takes to put this in place, you will have to protect your house. We can do things, but unfortunately having an apartment, carpets or a television in the basement is really (not recommended). You can have a place to store your belongings, but not to live.”

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Vodanovic added that with the changing climate, some cities are dealing with more tornados, while others are surrounded by wildfires. Montreal is going to be dealing with abundant rain events for years to come.

“In Montreal, the water that falls in the centre of the city overwhelms the sewers because no sewer system in the world can handle that much rain. We understand you suffered damage, and the Quebec government has to recognize it. That’s why the mayor made a plea to the province for them to help, and we want people to be compensated in part for that damage because insurance companies are letting people down.”

Nazarian contends the Plante administration should share some of the blame for poorly managing water issues since it came to power. There is no actual citywide water strategy in place, as the last one was adopted in 2011 and covered a 10-year period ending in 2020.

“The city is obfuscating its responsibility and blaming people for having livable basements, instead of proposing actual solutions,” she said, adding that the city could make some improvements to its renoplex program in order to allow those flooded to have priority.

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That program subsidizes conversions to make homes more resilient with a subsidy that can reach up to $20,000 for individual homeowners. The city can also build more retention basins, starting with the Leduc basin in St-Laurent that had been planned for more than a decade but was cancelled in 2022. That borough, where Nazarian was elected, was one of the hardest hit in the Aug. 9 storms.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante walked back some of Vodanovic’s comments Tuesday morning, saying the city isn’t about to ban existing basement dwellings. However, perhaps some neighbourhoods should not allow new ones, she said.

“We know in the Centre-Sud neighbourhood, particularly in the Parthenais area, there are a lot of floods, so we have decided that new constructions that are susceptible to be flooded don’t have housing in basements,” Plante said. “Every borough can do these kind of modifications based on the reality that they face. There are no wall-to-wall solutions. We can still continue to live and to renovate basements in Montreal.”

jmagder@postmedia.com

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