CALEB NICKERSON
Allumettes Island
Nov. 13, 2019
The upper Pontiac recently had the misfortune of setting a record at the end of October, for the most . . .
power outages in recorded history. At 75 as of Oct. 31, they are tied with the previous record set in 2016, when the outages prompted outrage from the community and local officials established a committee to look into the causes of the numerous service interruptions.
Allumettes Island farmer David Gillespie has been keeping a log of the outages and their length since 2009 and said that while there were some improvements made by Hydro Quebec since 2016, they still have a long way to go. His analysis covers Line 221, which covers most of Allumettes Island, but he said the story is the same for those in the rest of the region, which is serviced by Line 224.
While the number of outages is alarmingly high, Gillespie pointed out that the overall time without power has dropped significantly (2,434 min. for 2019 so far compared to 4,030 min. in 2016), which is still a big increase from the same period last year (1,991 min. in 2018) . Several longer outages in the summer were due to equipment failures, and were fixed in short order. The early parts of the year were worse than usual, but the worst month by far was June, with 22 outages.
He added that even the short interruptions have big consequences for businesses and homeowners in the area, as a sustained average of two outages a week can damage appliances and cause major headaches for offices with computer equipment.
Allumettes Island Mayor Winston Sunstrum said that he has been in contact with MNA André Fortin and Hydro Quebec to assess the cause of the problems.
“We have expressed our concern about the outages coming back again and they have indicated that they’re working on it,” he said, adding that there are four companies with equipment traversing the area: Hydro Quebec (HQ), Brookfield Energy, Hydro One and the Ottawa River Power Corporation. “This is unique, most of Quebec is serviced by just Hydro Quebec. We’re in a situation where something’s going on between the two provinces and this problem has been around for a number of years, probably since I started on council in 2005.”
Sunstrum said that the complex arrangement makes it difficult to determine who is at fault for the outages, and said that interruptions across the river put the upper Pontiac out of service, and vice-versa. He added that he had heard the four companies had will be setting up a meeting to discuss the issue.
He added that the MRC recently passed a resolution requesting a meeting in HQ, which he anticipated would take place late this year or early 2020.
Hydro Quebec spokesperson Anna Rozanova confirmed that the lengthy outages earlier in the year were due to equipment failure, but could not give specifics. She said she had requested additional details on the outages from her colleagues and could not provide a precise answer in time for print.
