Armed with victim wishlist, Gatineau flood committee gets to work
Feedback from victims of the 2017 and 2019 floods will be the launching point for a new expert committee to make Gatineau, Que., more resilient to rising rivers.
The council-appointed committee starts working today, following four consultation sessions over the last month — the last in Pointe-Gatineau Wednesday night.
Residents affected by flooding were invited to share ideas on how to protect their neighbourhoods.
Magali Renault's own home on the edge of the river was flooded so badly in 2017 the foundation cracked apart.
In 2019, the flooding lasted so long she couldn't live in the home for almost two months.
Renault is suggesting the city allow the water to run through neighbourhoods as in some European cities; a kind of Venice in Gatineau, she said.
Most ideas were more modest, including calls for raised streets, or a dam on a local stream.
"The goal for us is to know all the solutions people have in mind to protect their neighbourhood," said Gatineau mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin.
The six-member panel includes experts in flood mitigation and urban planning.
Its chair René Villemure is an ethicist, appointed to make sure that decisions around resource spending are ethical and equitable, said the mayor.
The committee will make recommendations including new flood risk mapping and ways to reduce the risk to buildings and infrastructure.
A new map of flood zones in the Outaouais will be ready in the spring.
Pedneaud-Jobin hopes the recommendations will help shape the Quebec government's own deliberations as it creates new flood regulations, which are expected by the end of 2020.
One of the thorny issues, he said, will be compensation for residents in areas the province determines is too high risk for repeat flooding.
"If we want to ask them to leave, we'll have to pay market value," he said.
"We can't ask them to leave a $400,000 house for half the price, they will not leave. And that's why the discussion with the Quebec government is far from over."
John Savage said the issue of compensation looms large in deciding whether he stays or leaves his waterfront home on rue Jacques-Cartier.
"I think the major catastrophe of all this is that a lot of us have lost our equity in our homes," he said.
Though the meetings are over, the city still welcomes public input in writing until Dec. 15.
