Following an outage that left thousands in the upper Pontiac without power early last week, local officials are calling on Hydro-Québec to offer better short-term fixes to the region’s frequent outages while residents wait for a new substation.

A storm early on July 7 disconnected thousands of residents in Sheenboro, Chichester, Waltham, Allumette Island and Mansfield and Pontefract at various times and for various durations over the following days.

Hydro-Québec spokesperson Marie-Annick Gariépy said power was completely restored to the area by noon on July 8, with Waltham being the last municipality to be reconnected.

“We suspect that the service interruptions may have been caused by tree branches coming into contact with our power lines, or by equipment failure,” wrote Gariépy in an email to THE EQUITY.

She said while the exact cause is not known, the company has identified the general trouble area that caused the outage. Teams will begin “intensive tree and branch trimming” in the sector this week – work that was already scheduled as a part of ongoing tree and branch maintenance.

She said crews will cut down over 2,000 trees deemed dangerous or at risk of causing outages along a Waltham distribution line that serves part of the sector’s customers, and will also carry out clearing and brush-cutting operations.

MRC Pontiac warden Jane Toller said residents across the region have heard the same vegetation story for years from Hydro-Québec. In a letter to company CEO Claudine Bouchard, Toller wrote that “pruning needs to be done continuously,” and that the situation is “not acceptable.”

Toller said in an interview on Friday that while a new substation is slated for Mansfield before 2030, there is still lots of work to be done in the meantime to maintain foliage and improve lines.

“The reason it needs to be an ongoing cutback is because it’s great that you’re doing the modernization chain, but the tree is still going to fall on the line,” she said.

Allumette Island mayor Corey Spence said he has seen these brush- and tree-cutting operations by Hydro-Québec in the past, but knows the problem has more to do with the age of the lines, some of which are over 100 years old.

“The down and dirty of it is that the network is just old, and that it needs to be upgraded, ASAP,” he said.

Toller said with news of lines being replaced in Luskville, the MRC Pontiac should also be able to get replacement lines in the meantime until the substation is complete.

“One of the reasons why this is happening is that we have antique infrastructure [ . . . ] Building a substation, that’s going to take some time, but replacing lines, that’s something that could be done tomorrow.”

She said the region has seen some wins as of late, such as an increased number of Hydro-Québec employees being dispatched to the Pontiac when outages like these do happen. But she said what is lacking is a short-term plan to improve service.

“They have a long-term plan, but we need a short-term plan,” she said. “I’m going to accomplish that by going to the top [ . . . ] I need to make the best case that it is unacceptable that we have more outages with no immediate solution.”

Spence, who said ongoing tree- and brush-work should be finished in the upper Pontiac by the end of this year, said his residents have seen enough of these power outages, adding that the work can’t come soon enough.

“The citizens were clearly frustrated, and the sooner they get this upgrade done, the better for everybody.”