Hundreds attended a public consultation in Pierrefonds-Roxboro to learn more about the new flood zone map, publicly released on September 30 by the Communaute Metropolitaine de Montreal (CMM), which has doubled the number of buildings located in flood areas in the Greater Montreal region–This represents almost 10 billion in property value. Pierrefonds-Roxboro will be strongly impacted by the new regulations.
“At my age the investment that we’ve, that we made in our homes, that’s our pension,” said René Leblanc, who has lived in Pierrefonds-Roxboro for 40 years. “That’s that’s our retirement fund… where do we go from here?”
Leblanc says that he was flooded once, but that was in 2017 when historic flood waters led the city to declare a state of emergency. The borough was also hit hard this August when Tropical storm Debby brought almost 160 millimeters of rain to Montreal.
“I have to suffer an economic loss because my home is in a flood zone,” he said.
The number of homes on the map went from 700 properties to 1800 properties, that’s a 150 per cent increase.
“We don’t only talk about single family homes. I have a senior’s home within this zone,” said Jim Beis, Mayor of Pierrefonds-Roxboro. “I have our fire station, our police station, our public works yard. The C. L. S. C. which is the old C. L. S. C. which is right here in front of us.” Beis is concerned about future home buyers not being able to get a mortgage for homes that are now in flood zones.
The CMM fielded questions from residents about the new four-tiered colour coded map.
“The yellow colour is for the 350 year flood, which is a new zone,” explained Brent Edwards, Team leader of the flood risk management office at CMM, “[plus] climate change and the control the waters coming from the Ottawa river, we needed to increase the flow rate of the river theoretically for the flood maps.”
Leblanc worries about the valuation of his home and how that will affect him as he ages.
“Am I going to have to live there the rest of my life and just have my kids carry me out when I’m done with the house,” he said, worried about not being able to move into an old folks home. “It’s a stressful thing for, for everybody involved… because we don’t have the answers.”
