While much of the Island of Montreal was grappling with severe power outages after Wednesday’s ice storm, the city of Westmount was left largely unscathed. Only a few hundred residents out of 20,000 people lost power.
“Luckily we have not lost power like other parts of Montreal, but we certainly have a lot of trees to clean up,” said Westmount Mayor Christina Smith.
Smith explained that Westmount is in a unique situation. For decades now the on-island city has controlled its own power distribution system through Hydro Westmount. The city-owned company purchases power from Hydro-Québec, but then distributes it to residents independently.
Over time, Hydro Westmount buried 70 per cent of the city’s power lines, compared with 10 to 15 per cent on average for the province of Quebec.
Hydro-Québec spokesperson Gabrielle Leblanc says the percentage of buried lines is much higher on the Island of Montreal, at around 55 per cent, but those buried lines are mainly concentrated in the downtown core and in central areas like Mont Royal.
Smith says Westmount’s buried lines and its vigorous program of keeping power lines clear helped Westmount’s system hold up to the brutal ice storm that caused so much havoc on the West Island starting Wednesday.
“One of the things that really has helped us is we have a plan and we have constant maintenance of trimming around hydro wires, and so that is what has really helped us in terms of keeping the power on,” Smith said.
She added that the city has opened its doors to residents of other municipalities without power, offering its arena and recreation centre as shelter to those in need.
Experts say if the rest of the province truly wants to try and withstand the vagaries of winter or spring storms, more power lines should be buried.
“One of the things that needs to be done is either bury these power lines wherever possible, and also tree branches must be regularly trimmed to avoid this happening so often,” said Concordia University engineering professor Andreas Athienitis. “We need to be better prepared for it and there are many ways to be better prepared for it. Bury as many of the local lines under the ground and better cut tree branches.”
Leblanc says it costs around $1 million per kilometre to have an underground system. She says the province has tried to bury lines over the years, but it’s costly and cumbersome.
“An underground system is 10 times more expensive than an overhead system,” Leblanc said. “We do it where it makes sense. Most of the network is already built. We would need to have authorization to bury the lines. It’s just not realistic. We put more budget into controlling vegetation near the lines.”
Leblanc added that vegetation around Hydro-Québec lines was responsible for about 40 per cent of power outages.
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