"The problem is that some areas, no matter how established, are no longer sustainable if they’re going to flood successively. Houses will have to be demolished and the land returned to its natural state, allowed to absorb excess water, as nature intended."

Royal Canadian Navy sailors from the Naval Reserve assist Immediate Response Unit soldiers from 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group as they conduct a shoreline reconnaissance of flood afflicted areas in Ottawa, Ontario. Photo: Avr Melissa Gloude/CAF

Back in 2011, Quebec’s Richelieu River Valley was hit with record flooding. Because of heavy winter snow and a particularly wet spring, water from Lake Champlain, which lies mainly over the border in Vermont and New York state, poured into the Richelieu.

More than 3,000 homes in Quebec were flooded over a period of two months, with losses of $78 million.

The Quebec government decided that 126 homes most at risk should be demolished. But after sustained pressure from homeowners and municipal officials, the province allowed some of the owners to demolish and rebuild their houses on the exact same sites, provided they added flood protection to their homes.

In the end, 51 houses were rebuilt at huge costs to taxpayers in areas that are as prone as ever to flooding. It’s a bit like rebuilding a house that collapsed in an earthquake on top of the exact same geological fault.

Among those who rebuilt along the Richelieu was Dominic Moschetti, who also took the opportunity to expand his house and put it on pillars. He got a $150,000 grant from the Quebec government and then spent $300,000. While he’s worried about catastrophic flooding this spring, he has no regrets.

“When you’ve been in the same place for 25 years and it’s a particular spot, I don’t think that you feel like leaving and building elsewhere,” Moschetti told Radio-Canada a few days ago as river water lapped over his front lawn and neighbours were putting down sandbags.

Luc Castonguay, planning director for the city of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, admits it’s a bit crazy to rebuild houses in areas that are regularly flooded and where the land should be left vacant. “These people are in zones that can still be potentially flooded for several weeks and their homes inaccessible to emergency services, so it’s not ideal.”

It’s this kind of public policy idiocy that needs to end as we increasingly live with flooding caused by climate change and the results of irresponsible development that has filled in marshland and paved over low-lying areas, leaving spring runoff with no place to go. The town of Ste-Marthe-sur-le-Lac on Quebec’s Lac des Deux-Montagnes is exactly that kind of place. It’s grown topsy since a dike was built along the lake in the late 1970s. When the dike broke, the place flooded and 6,000 people were forced from their homes.

“There is no valid excuse for humans to build in that spot,” according to hydrologist François Brissette of École de technologie supérieure. “The reason they are protected by dikes is because their houses are built in a lake.”

Finally, politicians seem to have got the message and decided that there’s a limit to the public’s willingness to pay. Quebec Premier François Legault says he doesn’t want to end up next spring facing 6,000 flooded homes and 10,000 evacuees. “We can’t have this every year. We need permanent solutions.”

Quebec is proposing to buy out homeowners in designated flood zones to a maximum of $250,000 ($200,000 per structure plus $50,000 per lot). For those who want to stay, he says the province will pay a maximum of $100,000 for repairs but on a one-time basis only.

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, facing a second consecutive year of flooding on the Saint John River, says his province is going to stop “blindly repairing” areas hit by flooding and look for more permanent solutions. “I think we’ve got to look seriously at the impacts we’re seeing with changing weather conditions and how we evaluate building sites, and how we encourage people to actually relocate,” he said.

Federally, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is on the same page, reflecting a rare federal-provincial consensus. “At some point, you’re going to have to say that if people ignore their knowledge base and deliberately rebuild in danger zones, they’re going to have to assume their own responsibility for the cost burden.

“After it’s happened once, then twice and then three times, at some point the taxpayer’s patience runs out,” Goodale said.

Residents clearly need help, to clean up their flooded homes and allow them to move on with their lives. And one could argue that they had no idea of the risk they were facing when they built or purchased their homes.

Flood mapping in this country is in a pathetic state, with a hit and miss approach depending on the province or municipality. In the U.K., you can go on a government website, punch in your postal code and get an online flood risk map for your property, but in Canada, many maps are still on paper or are not made public by authorities.

“Canadians are in the dark when it comes to flood risk,” according to Jason Thistlewaite, an environment professor at University of Waterloo. “It really comes down to poor government coordination.”

And with a changing climate and the impact of urban development, road-building and logging, flood maps need to be constantly redrawn. One estimate is that it would cost $365 million over a decade to provide up-to-date flood mapping for the whole country.

Sounds like a smart investment, not just for government but for homeowners, insurance companies and banks, which need to make sure they’re not providing mortgages to homeowners who can be left underwater.

Local politicians are already balking at this tough talk from the provinces and Ottawa. Says Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante, “This is a question that we must approach with gentleness. We’re talking about whole neighbourhoods in some cases.” Gatineau’s Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin is also worried about displacing longtime residents and says he favours protecting areas at risk.

The problem is that some areas, no matter how established, are no longer sustainable if they’re going to flood successively. Houses will have to be demolished and the land returned to its natural state, allowed to absorb excess water, as nature intended.

And the last thing we need are areas pockmarked with some houses that have been demolished or abandoned and others that remain inhabited. In that case, community life is destroyed, nor can natural flood plains be re-established. It’s when talk moves inevitably to expropriations and forced relocations that things will get really rough for politicians and we’ll see if they stick to their new-found policies of tough love.

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