Committee seeks your input on how floods impacted your property or business

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2019 saw record and near record high water levels in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Basin. With that in mind Canada and the United States created the International Joint Commission (IJC) because they recognized that each country is affected by the other’s actions in lake and river systems along the border. The two countries cooperate to manage these waters and to protect them for the benefit of today’s citizens and future generations.

The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Adaptive Management (GLAM) Committee, under the IJC, is seeking input from property and business owners that have been directly affected by the high water levels on the shoreline of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River in 2019.

⭐ Verified AD ✔️

The International Joint Commission (IJC) has released a 20-minute online questionnaire for those effected by flooding in 2019.

If you are one of the unfortunates effected, please consider taking the time to fill in the questionnaire. Photo examples of the effects of the flooding are encouraged. Information from the questionnaire will be used to asses current regulations managing outflows from the great lakes, and to inform future decisions.

Both in 2017 and 2019, homes were threatened in Pierrefonds/Roxboro, Ile-Bizard/Ste-Genevieve and Ahuntsic/Cartierville as well as a number of off island communities.

The overall costs of last years spring flooding for Montreal was more than $17 million. That bill doesn’t cover the cost of troops deployed by both Provincial and Federal governments or the hundreds of hours put in by volunteers. Much of these funds were spent on preventative measures and seem to have been effective, the number of flooded homes fell from 1000 in 2017 to 100 in 2019. While this is a dramatic improvement it still represents families with damaged or lost homes and lives thrown into chaos.

We live alongside a river, at the base of Mount Royal which is considered an extinct volcano, but much of that land is closer to river level than it is to the mountain peak, particularly in the West Island. Flooding has always been an issue for people living in our region.

Despite not having the best flood data for our region “Canada’s Changing Climate Report” published by Natural Resources Canada notes that overall temperatures have risen in across Canada, up 1.4c during winter and 1.5c during summer. In addition, Quebec has seen a 10.5% overall increase in precipitation with a 20% increase in spring and fall. The report itself notes that weather monitoring stations are insufficient across Canada to gather enough information for more than a low to medium confidence rating on this data. If this trend is accurate, we can expect a considerable increase in spring runoff as extra snow and added rain swell our lakes and rivers.

The GLAM Committee would like to know how conditions at your property change for different water level conditions.

To have your voice included in the survey click here 

1 COMMENT

  1. Great job by these authorities in evaluating the damages caused by flooding and seeking viable ways to readdress the situation.
    I’ll like to add that when such disasters occur, animals are in the fore–front of victims and casualties.
    Given this, efforts to resolve these situations should factor animal right and conservation into the larger picture.

    Great job with this site and article once again!

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