On one Pierrefonds street, much anger: Why are they still on the flood map?

Itsik Romano and his wife, Kim Bronstein, are expecting their sixth child, but they can’t expand their home — nor do they think they can get a good price if they sell it and buy an upgrade.

“I desperately need two extra rooms in my house,” Romano said.

Yolaine Martineau wants to pay off her debts so she can place her husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease, in a long-term care facility and have enough money left over to rent an apartment. But her house needs repairs before she can put it up for sale and she has run out of money.

Daisy Depradine recently sold her house, but it was on the market for six months and she had to reduce her asking price to find a buyer.

These three homeowners on des Maçons St. in Pierrefonds are a few of hundreds who find themselves on a map outlining flood-prone areas in the province, called the Zone d’intervention spéciale (ZIS). It was drawn up in the summer of 2019 in response to historic flooding that spring and is meant to be a temporary measure until the government sorts out its policy for managing homes in flood zones.

Owners with homes on the map have seen their values plummet and insurance rates spike. And they can’t get permits to make renovations or improvements, as their ZIS distinction prohibits them from enlarging the footprint of their homes, or even doing minor landscaping jobs like building a new fence or erecting a retaining wall.

While des Maçons was one of the worst-hit areas in 2017, it and much of the borough remained dry in 2019 when the water level of the Rivière-des-Prairies rose even higher.

“Regardless of the fact that we were successful in preventing floods in 2019, (the province) still says those areas are extremely vulnerable,” said Jim Beis, the mayor of Pierrefonds-Roxboro.

Beis said it’s been difficult for those in the area to find insurance. A condominium owner recently had to resort to an American insurance company because no Canadian ones would cover him, he said. In Romano’s case, he is now paying double for his home insurance than he did before the 2017 flood, after canvassing many companies for the best rate.

Beis said the ZIS map distinction is particularly frustrating because his borough knows the cause of the 2017 floods and what to do to prevent a recurrence.

The source of flooding for most homes in Pierrefonds that year was storm sewer overflow, Beis explained. Storm sewers, which collect rainwater on each street and send it out to the Prairies River, link to four-foot-diameter pipes that normally push water to the river. However, those sewers don’t have a mechanism to stop water from flowing backward. That’s why in 2017, when the level of the rushing river reached higher than the outtake pipes, it sent water back through the system and turned collector sewers into geysers, shooting water onto the streets and flooding hundreds of houses that were never deemed to be in a flood-prone area.

“It flooded my backyard and then the pressure of the water smashed my door down,” said longtime des Maçons St. resident René Leblanc. “In four minutes, the whole basement was flooded, but it came from above-ground water that came up from the storm sewers.”

The back-flow issue also forced major streets in the borough to close, as Pierrefonds Blvd. near St-Jean Blvd. was under five feet of water. The shopping district there was closed and the damage was so severe that the Mourelatos grocery store closed and nothing has yet replaced it. The borough hall and a seniors residence in the borough were also evacuated during the flooding.

However, in 2019 the borough was better prepared. Weeks before the usual flooding period, divers were sent in to weld cofferdams into the affected storm sewers to act as backwater valves. The borough also rented pumps and inflatable sea walls to hold back the river. The result was that only 50 to 60 homes were flooded in mostly low-lying areas that typically see seasonal floods, compared with more than 800 homes in 2017.

The temporary measures cost roughly $7 million annually, so a permanent solution would save money in the long run, Beis said.

However, he said the borough is a victim of its success, because the provincial government and the city of Montreal don’t see an urgency to find permanent solutions. Until permanent fixes can be made, those affected by the 2017 floods will remain on the ZIS map.

A spokesperson for the Municipal Affairs Ministry said cities and towns can have their ZIS distinctions rescinded if they prove they have adopted sound practices to manage flood zones.

The town of Ste-Marthe-sur-le-lac was the hardest-hit municipality in the 2019 floods — more than 6,500 people had to leave their homes. It was removed from the map in the last revision, in December 2019. The cause of flooding there was the failure of a man-made dike holding back the river. The town was removed from the ZIS map after the dike was rebuilt, financed by a subsidy from provincial and federal governments that covered 80 per cent of the cost.

Pierrefonds-Roxboro has also been promised money to fix its sewer system.

In August 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $50 million to the city of Montreal to acquire wetlands in the western sector of Pierrefonds and to fix the storm sewer system as part of work to build the Grand Parc de l’Ouest — a swath of protected green space that would be Canada’s largest urban park.

Beis said, however, that money is being held up by the central city. Even a request he made to bring in experts to evaluate the situation has been denied.

“We need immediate infrastructure in these areas,” said Beis, who is a member of the opposition Ensemble Montréal. “The money is encouraging, but if (the city) chooses to spend it elsewhere, I think that’s the wrong thing to do.”

Linda Boutin, a spokesperson for the city of Montreal, said the various levels of government are studying the problems in Pierrefonds and will come up with a solution soon, in hopes of resolving the issue by 2023.

But every delay in installing a permanent fix is a huge handicap for hundreds of residents of the borough, Beis said, as their property values remain depressed.

Re/Max real estate agent Marty Schaap agrees. He said there is a stigma around many houses in the Pierrefonds area because of the 2017 floods.

“Even though the borough did a phenomenal job in 2019 in preventing everything, there are problems selling homes (near the water),” he said. People are particularly wary of buying a home within the ZIS map because they can’t make any renovations, and their future status is uncertain.

Depradine said she experienced that stigma when she was trying to sell her home.

“Everyone who came liked the house, but we had to answer questions about the flood all the time,” she said. “I never saw a house take so long to sell.”

In Martineau’s case, she’s still waiting for money she has been promised since 2017 to repair some foundation cracks and finish landscaping — leftover damage from the 2017 flood. But like so many affected by floods, that money has been slow to come.

She said she can’t repair the house without that money, and she’s concerned that because of the ZIS distinction, she won’t find any buyers if the house isn’t in pristine shape.

“We’re hostages of this,” she said. “It’s us who have to pay for all this, but (the city) didn’t do the work with the sewers. The city never took the responsibility, and now we have to pay.”