CALEB NICKERSON
Calumet Island Nov. 4, 2019
On Monday evening, officials from a variety of groups that manage the flow of the . . .
Ottawa River watershed held an information evening at the municipal hall on Calumet Island to answer questions about the spring floods.
Engineers and communications staffers from Hydro Quebec (HQ) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) were present, as well as staff from the provincial ministries of Civil Security and Environment and the Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board (ORRPB). The meeting was just one of many the group was hosting throughout the region, with another scheduled for the Campbell’s Bay RA Hall the following evening.
There were numerous kiosks with countless visual aides to help contextualize the intense flooding that hit the region in 2017 and 2019. Several municipalities, as well as MRC Pontiac’s council, have requested an investigation into the management of the dams on the river, despite the insistence of the officials running the facilities who say the floods were the result of natural causes, not human negligence.
HQ water management engineer Marie Beaumont, explained that the majority of dams they operate are “run of river” facilities, meaning they don’t have a reservoir to store water and have almost no influence on the flow of the river. The water flows from the large, wide portion of the river near Fort Coulonge, into the narrow rapids near Calumet Island, which creates a bit of a choke point.
“The rapid takes control of the river,” she said. “The levels that you see in the village of Bryson and in Fort Coulonge also, are the levels that you would have naturally if there was no power station downstream … Water has trouble passing through quickly, so it has a back water effect upstream, up to Fort Coulonge.”
She added that the primary cause of the flooding was the amount of snow and rain that was observed at the end of April. Normally, the snow melts gradually throughout the spring, but this year, it accumulated later than normal. In addition, a huge dump of rain arrived over a very short period, and set the stage for the floods.
“Timing is everything, seriously,” Beaumont said. “If we had this rain a little bit later, we would have had almost no issues.”
According to a handout the ORRPB provided, a land area twice the size of New Brunswick drains into the Ottawa River, and if the spring thaw isn’t gradual, it sets a huge amount of water into motion over a short period of time. The reservoirs upstream can hold about 40 per cent of the runoff from an average spring, but in abnormal years like 2019, they can’t contain it all.
The ORRRPB is responsible for ensuring the flows from the main reservoirs are managed in a coordinated way by the four organizations that manage them. They are subject to both federal and provincial legislation and regulations in regards to water management.
Manon Lalonde is an executive engineer with the Ottawa River Regulation Secretariat, which is the two-person office that supports the work of the planning board and communicates with the public. She said that the group began to look at updating their website following the 2017 floods in order to offer hourly updates on the river levels, instead of the daily bulletins they currently offer. She said that due to the small number of staff in the office, they weren’t able to roll out the new website in time for 2019, but will have it up and running for this coming spring.
