Water wars not cooling off

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

The City of Montreal is spending about $53 million updating Pierrefonds/Roxboro's water filtration plant, according to the agglomeration council, but the move has some West Island municipalities on alert.

"We are going to raise the volume of the reservoir from 9,000 cubic metres to 22, 500 cubic metres," said Sammy Forcillo, executive committee member at the City of Montreal and head of the infrastructure, roads, and water management files.

According to Forcillo, the Pierrefonds water filtration plant is in major need of an upgrade. About $25 million of the total funds will be spent on bringing the plant up to date with provincial norms, $15 million will go toward building a new reservoir at the plant, and the remaining $13 million will enlarge the current reservoir.

Pierrefonds/Roxboro borough mayor Monique Worth said the plant has been in need of an update since before the 2001 mergers that amalgamated her borough and several other cities to Montreal. "None of it was really up to date," she commented.

Worth added the plant's larger capacity may allow other nearby cities to start getting more of their water from there, suggesting Ste. Anne de Bellevue as an example.

However Ste. Anne Mayor Bill Tierney did not seem too taken with the idea when contacted by The Chronicle. "We don't really care who the water comes from," he said, adding Ste. Anne currently gets much of its water from Pointe Claire. "They don’t need to be building up the Pierrefonds plant for us," he continued. "It's wasteful. There is already enough capacity in Pointe Claire."

Tierney thinks there is a "bit of a water war" between the cities of Pointe Claire and Montreal.

"There is disagreement between Montreal and Pointe Claire on the provincial level," confirmed Pointe Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie. He did not comment on any possible situation with Ste. Anne de Bellevue, but pointed to Montreal's recent scrap with his municipality over updating fluoride equipment at the Pointe Claire water filtration plant.

When Pointe Claire demerged from Montreal in 2006, said McMurchie, "exploitation rights" for the water plant returned to Pointe Claire, even if the plant itself was legally the property of the City of Montreal. Later on, Pointe Claire wished to update its fluoride treatment equipment, but Montreal tried to stop them, until Pointe Claire was able to argue the "exploitation rights" allowed them to do whatever they wanted.

Forcillo also said he could not talk about any plans related to Ste. Anne de Bellevue. He said the City of Montreal's way of charging consumers for water was fairer, since it charged nine cents per cubic metre and left the remaining charges for landlords to determine.

McMurchie countered that Pointe Claire's charges, 30 cents per cubic metre, were more just because they were based on what consumers directly used. "It is the model that should be followed," he added.

Forcillo said work on the Pierrefonds plant is scheduled to begin this spring and will not conclude until 2010.

Meanwhile, Bill 22, a provincial motion that is supposed to revise power-sharing and jurisdiction agreements between the Montreal agglomeration council and reconstituted municipalities on a number of issues, including water, is to be debated at the Quebec National Assembly soon.