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desousa calls on city hall to reinstate cancelled project for retention basin after flooding
st-laurent borough mayor alan desousa called on the plante administration on tuesday to reinstate a project it cancelled last year to build a retention basin in his borough to help during heavy rain.
aug 21 2024
5 minute read
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the city of montreal made a mistake cancelling the construction of a retention basin to handle excess storm water in the borough of st-laurent two years ago and it should reinstate the project, the mayor of the borough urged this week.
the leduc retention basin, as it was to be called, was planned for over a decade with three other retention basins in other parts of the city that have since been built. but the projet montréal administration of mayor valérie plante cancelled the 60,000 cubic-metre capacity leduc basin in 2022.
“if the retention basin had been built, it would have definitely helped,” borough mayor alan desousa said, referring to the recent episodes of torrential rain that caused extensive flooding in private basements and garages in st-laurent.
the borough was one of the hardest-hit communities on montreal island in the aug. 9 downpour that resulted from the remnants of tropical storm debby. the borough received 155 millimetres of rain in 24 hours, but the sewer system was already overwhelmed after 40 millimetres had fallen that morning, desousa said. the same phenomenon occurred on july 10, he said.
the retention basin would have held the equivalent of about 20 olympic-sized swimming pools.
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“it (the basin) would have taken 60,000 cubic metres of water out of what was in the collector that backed up,” he said.
“it’s hard to say we would have had no flooding, but not having it there resulted in significant flooding in st-laurent.”
desousa, a member of opposition ensemble montréal party, has written to plante asking for a meeting to discuss reinstating the leduc basin project in the city’s next capital works program. he also raised the issue during the councillors’ question period at a city council meeting on tuesday.
the plante administration’s explanation for cancelling the project doesn’t make sense, desousa contends.
maja vodanovic, the city executive committee member responsible for water, responded to desousa in council that the leduc basin project was scrapped because it didn’t meet the criteria for federal funding.
however, the project had been greenlighted for government funding since 2010. the federal government announced that year that a $98.6 million federal and provincial grant under the building canada fund-quebec program had been approved for montreal to build the four retention basins: the rockfield basin in lachine borough, the william basin in sud-ouest borough, the lavigne basin in ahunstic-cartierville borough and leduc in st-laurent.
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in an interview with the gazette on wednesday, vodanovic said the city spent all of the federal-provincial grant that was earmarked for the four retention basins to build the first three.
“it cost more than expected,” she said.
nevertheless, vodanovic maintains the leduc retention basin didn’t “qualify enough” compared to the three other retention basins to satisfy the federal-provincial funding program’s requirement of reducing the amount of untreated waste water being discharged into the river during storms. she added there were technical issues that delayed the leduc project.
vodanovic also told city council on tuesday that the priority of the federal-provincial funding program had been to prevent the discharge of storm water mixed with waste water into the river and that “the leduc (basin) did not meet those criteria.”
however, desousa said the city’s water department wrote in various reports that the leduc basin was going to reduce the number of discharges into the river from 20 a year to six. and the discharge objective to qualify for the federal-provincial funding was six.
moreover, none of the four retention basins was going to eliminate discharges into the rivers entirely, desousa said.
the leduc basin also had by far the largest capacity of the four retention basins. the closest is the rockfield basin , which was built in 2023 and has a capacity of 45,000 cubic metres, or the equivalent of 15 olympic-sized swimming pools.
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the rockfield basin, montreal’s largest underground water retention basin, in the lachine borough.
john mahoney
/
montreal gazette files
desousa lobbied the federal government for the funding for the four retention basins when he handled the file on the executive committee in the early 2000s.
all four of the retention basins qualified for the building canada funding program in 2010 , as the press releases at the time attest. the combined cost of the four basins was pegged at $148 million at that time, of which $49.4 million was to be footed by montreal. ottawa and quebec were each to pony up $49.3 million.
however, the price of each basin grew. the estimated cost of the leduc basin alone was pegged at $77.4 million in 2018, according to a city document at the time.
vodanovic told the gazette that the leduc basin price tag had reached $110 million before it was cancelled.
“we’re not going to put it back (in the capital works program),” she said of the project. “the leduc basin is very low in our priorities at this time because it doesn’t help with flooding as much as the others.”
beyond capacity, a project has to serve the greatest numbers of people to top the city’s priority list, vodanovic said.
the leduc basin wouldn’t have prevented flooding in the extreme rain falls that hit montreal, she added.
however, desousa said about 60 per cent of st-laurent borough is served by the leduc sewer collector, which overflowed in the recent storms. the leduc retention basin, which was to be built under marcel-laurin park, would have served a vast residential and industrial sector, he said.
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vodanovic told council that other retention basins are planned in other areas. for example, council has approved the st-jacques retention basin in sud-ouest borough.
however, montrealers shouldn’t wait on the city because it can’t build infrastructure fast enough, she told the gazette. homeowners have to weatherproof their properties, she said, such as by installing waterproof garage doors, installing backflow valves and replacing sloping driveways. the city has adapted its renoplex renovation subsidy program to include work that protects properties from flooding, she said.
however, desousa said sponge parks and waterproof garage doors aren’t enough.
st-laurent made use of all of the borough’s sponge parks during the heavy rains, but they weren’t enough, he said. the borough diverted rain water to the dry creek bed in the woodland of marcel-laurin park, for example, and made use of the open-air water retention basin in bois-franc park.
desousa said the city abdicated from its responsibilities when it cancelled the leduc retention basin.
“the administration cancelled a major infrastructure that prior administrations had worked on with a view to alleviating storm water management and flooding and didn’t have a backup plan,” he said.
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“that’s what i fault them for. when you cancel a major infrastructure project like that, you have to have a plan b.”
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