This was first published last February. I’m hoping Hudson residents will develop a sense of urgency on this issue. Maybe when their toilets no longer flush…
No discussions about development in Hudson, Rigaud and St. Lazare should exclude the impact on the water table supplying our drinking water.
A study released in June 2015 found that precipitation falling on Rigaud Mountain and the Hudson and St. Lazare plateaus represents 41% of the total replenishment of the Vaudreuil-Soulanges aquifer, the water table supplying drinking water to more than 100,000 Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents. (FYI, St. Lazare is the largest municipality in Quebec entirely dependent on well water.)
The chief concern expressed in the Programme d’acquisition de connaissances sur les eaux souterraines (PACES) report is that the zones with the highest replenishment rate — Mont Rigaud, Hudson and St. Lazare — also happen to be the most vulnerable to contamination.
The study was carried out over a two-year period by a multidisciplinary team from the Université du Québec à Montréal, École Polytechnique and GéoMont, the agency mandated to map the…
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thousandlashesdotca 
I’m old enough to lie in bed for long periods w/o sleeping or troubling myself with the other bed related activities that preoccupied most of my younger waking moments. So I naturally started thinking of our water needs in Hudson. The Viviry valley with its Trout Stream to the west of Cote and renamed the Viviry Creek east of the same has a fairly large drainage basin . Enough to average about 17 million liters going through the broke back dam every day. Now statistics tell me that we generally use 350 liters per day per person in Canada. We got 5000 in Hudson. So we use on avg. 1.75 million liters per day. Can’t we think about a newer high tech Pine Lake that would supply aesthetics and potable water at the same time not to far from our existing reservoir and treatment facilities on upper Cameron? It might cost more or ,maybe less, than an Ottawa River intake but if we were doing Pine Lake scenarios wouldn’t it be worth a look? On the other hand if there was less available water I would maybe not have to get up 5 times a night. With age comes a dubious claim to wisdom along with all the other joys of planned obsolescence.
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Brian, you’re a wealth of surprises. This would be simple, elegant solution as long as the town has enough control of the watershed to be able to halt anything that threatens its water supply. Between you and Daren we can save the cost of hiring EXP or Technika HBA or any of those go-to boilerplate suppliers. Unless of course Quebec requires the blessing of a genie-conseil to cost it out. I’ve never understood why the town can’t be its own general contractor. Doubtless we’ll be told there’s a law against that.
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If I may- what would be the consequences of the pesticides Whitlock GC club uses? The silt had to be tested in the culvert under main road for toxicity. If pine lake could be a lake by day and retention basin by night… Would the pesticide runoff used by WGC affect this?
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Good question Kevin. A consulting engineer could clarify and make the project more costly and complex than anyone could afford.
Wells are pre-doomed to failure and the general aquifer is no more protected than Pine Lake. We’ll need water from the Lake sooner or later, we need to decide best pickup point first and then plan how much pre-treatment we need and where the pipe should run.
I’ve been a proponent of intake around Thompson Park, treatment plant across Main and let it supply the West end (there’s a $Million problem solved) and pump to existing Hudson supply either along the tracks to Town or through a right of way around Alstonvale/Hudson Valleys. Someone who knows the land could better define the best intake and delivery path.
But we need to think and act or one day we won’t be able to support our existing population with clean water.
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Great idea. Pine Lake could be a great catch-basin and also act as a reservoir. There are indeed dry times when Pine Lake lacks sufficient inflowing water.
During those times, pump it full from the Lake on the way to the treatment plant. A pipe and a pump would do it. Glad we haven’t paved Cameron or Main yet, an example of tremendous foresight.
Please dig Pine Lake deep enough to catch those customers who want to leap and swim on a hot day from the proposed Ratcliffe/ Grubert Community Zipline planned from the Cedar Right of way to Cameron. Yee Haw.
Towns are discouraged from being their own contractor because it just makes it so much harder for the engineering firms to gouge enough money to finance political party donations.
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Quite right about threats to the watershed, Jim. I believe it’s shared by Hudson , St. Lazare, and Vaudreuil West . Development would , of course, affect it by, among other things , increased run-off which might be good for volume but bad for quality. I don’t really see an increase in agri-activity so nitrates should stay down. On the other hand Peter and his zipline initiative might add to filtration problems when people have the fecal coliforms scared out of them.
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