His Serres Paul Amyotte greenhouse on Rue Principale in Mansfield has lost power around a half-dozen times during the series of outages that hit Mansfield, Waltham, Chichester, Allumette Island and Sheenboro over the past two weeks.

Amyotte said the power outages have been affecting the productivity of crops, and have cost him about 80 per cent of his cucumbers and a quarter of his tomatoes.

One morning last week the greenhouses lost power, but Amyotte was told by Hydro-Québec that the power would be back on around 9:30 a.m., so he waited for it to come back on at that time.

It did not. Power did not come back on until around 1 p.m. that day, and Amyotte said the restoration delay really hurt his plants.

His tomatoes are kept alive via a hydroponic system which feeds the plants nutrients and water in a small bag in which the plants root. This system uses a timer which relies on electricity to keep it running, adding water to the bag when the water level is low.

“One tomato plant will drink the water in a half-hour,” Amyotte said, explaining that because the power was out, the plants didn’t receive the water they needed.

Amyotte said if Hydro-Québec had told him the power wouldn’t be restored until 1:30 p.m., he would have hooked his plants up to an alternative water source. He has ponds behind the greenhouse he can use in case of emergencies.

These ponds wouldn’t have been able to . . .

sustain the plants for the duration of the outage, but they would have helped mitigate some of the damage.

When his team realized the power wasn’t coming on until much later than Hydro-Québec had predicted, they opened the roof of the greenhouse to cool down the plants.

“It gets super hot. In here we had to take the ladder and open the roof by hand,” Amyotte said, adding that it can be done, but it takes a good deal of effort to climb the roughly 25 feet to the top of the greenhouse.

When the tomatoes don’t have enough water, they start looking for water sources elsewhere, including from other fruits on the vine. This means that many young fruits never reach maturity because the water is being sucked out of them.

When the water supply dries up, the plants aren’t hydrated enough to survive. Sometimes, a dying fruit will spread a kind of powdery mould to the rest of the plant which can infect and kill it.

Amyotte said he still has tomatoes for sale this week, but in the coming weeks he expects to lose a significant number of the fruits.

Luc Amyotte, who works in the greenhouse and is also Paul’s son, wasn’t optimistic either.

“We’re probably going to run out of tomatoes,” he said.

It can take up to two weeks for them to tell exactly how many tomato plants are dead or dying, so they will have to wait until then before they can see the scope of the impact.

But Paul estimates that all 700 of his tomato plants will be affected in some way.

Tomatoes account for about 20 per cent of his total sales, and he said losing three weeks of sales is a big hit.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said.

Once the tomato plants are able to get steady water intake again on a regular basis, the loss of sales won’t be a concern because the fruits will grow normally.

But until then, Amyotte and his staff are hoping Hydro-Québec is able to do something about these outages.

Sandra Armstrong, mayor of Mansfield and Pontefract, met with Amyotte last week when she and Pontiac warden Jane Toller visited his greenhouse.

She said the municipality is aware of the issue, and has been in talks with the hydro company to figure out solutions.

She said at least some of the outages are due to problems at the Waltham station, which has been in need of repairs for years.

In a June 24 Facebook post, Allumette Island mayor Corey Spence explained that a large part of the Upper Pontiac, including parts of Mansfield, “are normally synchronized with Ontario’s power grid. However, due to maintenance in this grid, these municipalities have been forced to rely solely on Hydro-Québec’s network.”

Mayor Spence wrote that Hydro-Québec has known about the ongoing issues at the Waltham station, but despite his numerous exchanges with representatives of the company, they are not communicating any short-term solutions.

“This has been known by Hydro-Québec for many years,” Spence wrote.

Armstrong said the mayors of the affected municipalities in the Upper Pontiac will meet with Hydro-Québec next week to discuss solutions.

THE EQUITY reached out to Hydro-Québec for comment on Monday but did not hear back before publication due to the Canada Day holiday.

Luc Amyotte (left) and Paul Amyotte (right) may lose three weeks’ worth of tomatoes because of a series of power outages that have been impacting various Upper Pontiac municipalities over the past few weeks.

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