Pierrefonds-Roxboro keeping close watch on water levels

Rivière des Prairies water levels are being carefully monitored and Pierrefonds-Roxboro Borough Mayor Jim Beis wants residents to know that lessons have been learned in the wake of the disastrous flooding last spring and that the necessary resources are at hand if the riverbanks should breach. “I feel confident that at least some of the areas of concern have been addressed,” Beis said Monday. A city report to be released this week and written about by Montreal Gazette reporter Andy Riga in Saturday’s paper said that Montreal was not prepared for the flooding which caused widespread damage, destroyed homes and turned people’s lives upside down. Beis said that valuable lessons were learned at the borough level during the crisis. “We learned that we didn’t have the necessary resources — the manpower, the machinery — in place,” he said. “We learned that this sort of crisis could occur more often moving forward. So we have been working since the fall to put temporary measures in place.” Beis said that temporary measures have been put in place in the areas flagged as most vulnerable to flooding, but he doesn’t know if these temporary measures will shift the problem to other areas. Beis listed Des-Rivières, Noël and Dauville streets and Château-Pierrefonds Ave. in Pierrefonds and 5th Ave. N. in Roxboro as some of the areas where workers have dug temporary dikes, stacked industrial-sized sandbags or installed an inflatable watergate system. Even with these measures in place, reports of winter flooding in parts of Quebec, caused by ice jams and heavy snow and rain, are causing some anxiety in the borough. “Civil security is monitoring water levels and we are so much better equipped with the knowledge of how to apply our resources now,” Beis said. “But everybody with property on the waterfront is nervous.” Beis and other mayors from municipalities affected by the spring flooding attended a government roundtable discussion in Quebec City to discuss floodrelated infrastructure issues last month. The session was webcast. He was challenged by former councillor Justine McIntyre at Monday’s council meeting about his comments during that roundtable. McIntyre had watched the session online. She suggested his comments during the session about allowing people to rebuild on floodplains because of a technology available which prevents water from infiltrating a home were misplaced. She said people are living in an ever-shifting scenario brought on by climate change and that she had a problem with his suggestion residents could rebuild on floodplains. The mayor said a public postmortem of the 2017 flooding in the borough is still in the works.