Sherbrooke gets $6.8 million for new pipes

Local Liberal Members of the National Assembly Luc Fortin and Guy Hardy were at Sherbrooke’s City Hall on Monday to announce $6,787,360 in Provincial Government support for waterworks infrastructure projects. Provided through the Programme d’infrastructures Quebec-municipalités (PIQM), an urban infrastructure fund of the provincial government, the funding represents two thirds of the overall cost of nearly $10.2 million in projects submitted to the government by the city in the last year.

“These combined efforts will allow the residents of the riding of Saint-francois to benefit from better infrastructure,” Hardy said as a part of the announcement, “together we will continue to offer our citizens positive and prosperous living environments.”

Fortin was similarly positive, highlighting the fact that the city was recently named as the municipality with the best drinking water in the province as a part of the reasoning for making sure that the system providing that water is kept in good shape.

Sherbrooke Mayor Steve Lussier shared that he was “very happy” with the news, noting that the sum comes in addition to $8.3 million already set aside in 2016 for work of a similar nature.

Caroline Gravel, Director of the city’s Urban Infrastructure Division, elaborated on the impacts for the city, naming nearly a dozen different projects that can now move ahead in terms of both sewers and water pipes accounting for more than 4.3 kilometers in total. She said that the projects that were submitted for funding were determined based on a plan established with the Ministry of Municipal affairs that takes into account a range of factors including the age of pipes, the material they are made of, and the number of breaks that have taken place in their lifetime.