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Ottawa is a city of shores, so perhaps the sight has left you incredulous, too: Where has all the water gone? Pedalling along the river path one evening last week, I saw a man fishing just east of the Champlain Bridge. He stood, not at the shore, but in the middle of the stretch of water to the first clump of northern islands.
The water did not reach his waist. Judging from the view on the bridge itself, it rather looks like a man could walk to Quebec without getting his shirt wet. It cannot be long before the iconic kayakers are grounded mid-stream.
At Constance Bay, about 25 kilometres upstream, the shore has receded with abandon. Sandbars have popped up here and there, mirage-like; shoals have swollen to small islands, inviting a realtor’s sign; everywhere boats are high and dry, tilting uselessly to one side. On Sunday, I dragged a 160-kilogram sailboat about 100 metres through water that mostly just wet the ankles. Then the wind puffed and died.
The river, in fact, is almost at an historic low. Only three times since 1950 has the level measured as low as it did on Labour Day. At 57.59 metres above sea level, this week’s Britannia reading is only 11 centimetres away from a 55-year low, set in 2001 at 57.48. And here we are midway through another dry week. (September has brought less than a millimetre of rain.)
The low water levels actually have important consequences, principally this one: As the river drops, Montreal’s suburbs go thirsty. “It’s serious enough. They’re below 30 cubic metres per second, so they’re sucking up mud right now,” said Fergus McLaughlin, executive engineer of the Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board.
The board is a clearing house of the major players controlling flow rates on the Ottawa, which is at the mercy of a series of dams and reservoirs along its 1,200-kilometre length.
Mr. McLaughlin spent part of yesterday morning on a conference call with the major stakeholders, one of several such telephonic gatherings in the last six weeks. “It’s a serious one,” said Mr. McLaughlin. “You’ll hear them crying for more water.”
To sort out the geography, for a moment: The Ottawa River meets the western edge of greater Montreal in the form of Lac des Deux Montagnes. There, the flow splits into two much smaller rivers that encircle Ile Jesus: the Mille Iles River to the north and the Des Prairies River to the south. (This is the large, but lesser-known island just north of the Island of Montreal.) Several communities near those shores depend on these smaller rivers for their drinking water, including Laval, Ste- Therese, Blainville and Boisbriand, Rosemere, Lorraine and Bois-des-Filion, to mention only a few.
Mr. McLaughlin said the Mille Iles River needs a minimum flow of 30 cubic metres a second to provide an adequate supply of drinking water for its intake pipes. Yesterday, he said the flow was at 22. To cope with the shortfall, many of the municipalities in mid-August imposed restrictions on watering lawns, washing cars and filling swimming pools.
There is plenty of water in upstream reservoirs—such as the mammoth Lake Temiscaming. The problem, explained Mr. McLaughlin, is that sudden releases of water only rob Peter to pay Paul. The two provincial electrical utilities, for instance, like to keep sizeable head ponds so they can generate an adequate amount of electricity. On Lake Temiscaming, meanwhile, there is a minimum level that must be maintained for navigation. And the released water only remedies downstream problems for a day or two; then the cycle begins anew. There are the needs of recreational users, meanwhile, who do not like to find their docks high and dry or their boats suddenly land-locked. And so the board plays a balancing act.
“We’re trying to get more water out of the system without actually disturbing too many people,” said Mr. McLaughlin. The fastest way to get more water to Montreal, he said, is to release water from the Poisson Blanc reservoir, on the upper Lievre River, which is a tributary of the Ottawa, spilling out near Buckingham. The effects are felt in Montreal within a day. There again, he added, there are consequences for cottagers on the reservoir.
Meredith Brown is the Ottawa Riverkeeper. Fluctuating levels, she points out, are part of a river’s natural cycle. “There’s a certain amount of resilience built into well-functioning systems, so they can take a hit of low water,” she said. There is no doubt an effect on plants and aquatic life, she added. A typical problem with river flow regulation, said Ms. Brown, is that private property owners want the shoreline at a point that suits them best. But those in charge of dam flows do not have a level that best suits the river’s overall health, she said. “They have no ecological level they have to maintain, which is what my beef is about.”
And so we are lucky here, really. The river may be receding, but we yet have many drops to drink.
Contact Kelly Egan at 726-5896 or by e-mail, kegan@thecitizen.canwest.com