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Water Management in Québec
Public Consultation Document
Discussion themes
Groundwater
Situation and status
In Québec, water is omnipresent in a myriad of pores, fractures and other chinks in
geological formations. The natural groundwater resource is renewed by precipitation input.
It is not static. It circulates under the territory as a whole, and its resurgence zones
enable the surface water balance and its dependent ecosystems to be maintained, especially
during low-water periods. Hence, large quantities of groundwater are accessible at an
acceptable cost throughout most of Québec. For the inhabited regions, available renewable
reserves are estimated at around 200 cubic kilometres.
Approximately 0.2% of the reserves is extracted and is used in the following
proportions:
 54% for human consumption (e.g. drinking water, fire protection);
- 39% for food production (e.g. fish farm supplies, livestock watering, land irrigation,
bottled water and water sold in bulk);
- 7% for various industrial uses (e.g. food preparation, cooling).
Under the Civil Code of Québec, groundwater is considered to be property under private
ownership linked to the ownership of immovable property. Landowners may use groundwater
and dispose of it as they see fit, subject to the restrictions imposed by legislation and
by common law. For example, from the standpoint of quality, the Environment Quality Act
prohibits contamination of groundwater. The government may therefore act to counter
contamination, provided the action responsible for the contamination can be proved.
Landowners may also capture as much groundwater as they wish, provided they do not deplete
the aquifer to the detriment of other users. The Civil Code does in fact provide a
recourse against landowners who deplete the water supply, although the burden of proof
lies on the injured party.
Use and Quality
In Québec, groundwater is the most economically accessible water supply source, due to
its abundance, quality and proximity to consumer locations. As a resource, it therefore
plays a key role in the demographic and economic growth of Québec’s regions.
For small and medium-sized communities, the quality of the groundwater makes it an
attractive alternative to surface water as a source of drinking water, due to the low
treatment cost involved. Hence, for nearly 1.5 million people—20% of the entire
population—scattered over nine-tenths of Québec’s inhabited areas, groundwater
is the preferred source of drinking water. Half these people are supplied by domestic
collection structures, and the other half by distribution systems.
Because of the uses to which Québec’s groundwater is put (utilization, potential
utilization or ecosystem maintenance), it must be of good quality. Generally speaking, the
groundwater in Québec is of sufficient quality to satisfy most of society’s
water-related needs. However, maintaining this quality demands that a number of
restrictions be placed on human activities in certain areas, so as not to compromise
groundwater use. The risk of groundwater contamination caused by land-based human activity
is due not only to the nature and intensity of that activity, but also to the
vulnerability of the groundwater resource.
In addition, although groundwater use is a form of land use, the development plans of
regional county municipalities do not, generally speaking, take it into consideration.
Very few municipalities have adopted zoning by-laws aimed at controlling land uses likely
to threaten the groundwater resource. For example, even though the Ministère de
l'Environnement has, since 1984, recommended that sanitary protection zones should be
established around the catchment areas of groundwater collection structures, only a
handful of municipalities have actually done this. It should be remembered that it is
always expensive, and sometimes impossible, to remove groundwater contamination. Hence,
the best approach is to prevent the contamination from occurring in the first place.
Groundwater contamination is said to be "nonpoint source" when the source of
the contamination covers a fairly large area. The source is usually poorly defined and
intermittent, and will vary from one point to another in the area concerned. For example,
the salt de-icers used on the roads constitute a threat that requires the implementation
of preventive measures in some cases.
Recurrent land fertilization and pesticide use can be a cause of nonpoint source
contamination. These practices are often carried out intensively in rural areas, as part
of farming activities. This situation is somewhat worrying, because groundwater is the
main source of drinking water for rural residents. In the 22-year period from 1970 to
1992, approximately 36% of the water distribution systems fed by groundwater exhibited
nitrate contamination at some time or another. The concentrations found were always in
excess of 1 milligram per litre (mg/l), but rarely in excess of the 10 mg/l standard for
drinking water. Some concentrations in excess of 10 mg/l were also detected in individual
wells. Consumption of water containing nitrate concentrations in excess of the standard
can cause blood problems, especially among very young children. However, no such cases
have been reported in Québec for many years.
Groundwater contamination is known as "point source" when the source of the
pollution is fairly limited in geographical terms. Deficient storage or poor handling of
potential contaminants may cause point source pollution of the groundwater resource. Many
different types of structures may be involved, if they are deficient or poorly managed,
including septic tank disposal fields, waste elimination sites, underground hydrocarbon
tanks, and so on.
A particularly common problem is bacteriological contamination of domestic groundwater
collection structures. For example, outbreaks of enteric diseases caused by the
consumption of contaminated groundwater are frequent in Québec. A total of 45 such
epidemics, involving over 1,800 individuals, were reported to the public health
authorities between 1989 and 1995. However, these cases represent only a small percentage
of the total number of water-related outbreaks, because many cases are not detected or
reported to the public health authorities, and thus escape epidemiological surveillance.
The Impact of Groundwater Collection on Resource Development
Protecting groundwater quality is not our only concern. The management of the water
collected can also be a problem in many cases. For example, construction of a water
collection structure will cause groundwater levels to drop in the immediate vicinity (a
phenomenon known as dewatering), and gradually to return to normal further away from the
structure. Dewatering can be detrimental to other collection structures located close-by.
It can also cause springs and wetlands to dry up, and may significantly reduce the
surrounding water balance (levels of lakes and watercourses). Some isolated cases have
been identified in Québec in the last few years, most notably in Saint-Omer, in the Baie
des Chaleurs, and in Sainte-Thérèse-de-Blainville.
At the same time, local conflicts between resource users are beginning to occur. In
some areas, the citizens are worried about the amount of water being removed, which they
feel is too great, given the future demand for domestic and agricultural purposes. The
development of different activity sectors and more intensive land occupation rates both
push the demand for water upwards. This increase, combined in some cases with a scarcity
of groundwater, intensifies the risk of future usage conflicts at the local level,
although at the regional level there is no reason to believe that the groundwater resource
is currently over-developed to such an extent that its sustainability is threatened.
Knowledge
Regional management of the groundwater resource, based on the geological aquifer
formation, appears at this time to be difficult, since the amount of regional groundwater
point data available is usually insufficient. Very few data interpretation documents have
been produced on a local and regional basis (hydrogeological maps). Information on the
definition of geological aquifer formations, their development potential and
vulnerability, recharge areas, the quality of the groundwater they produce, and the links
with receiving waters (bodies of water, watercourses and wetlands) is often incomplete or
scattered throughout different public and para-public bodies.
At the present time, the burden of acquiring knowledge about the groundwater resource
falls mainly to project proponents who are required to comply with government
authorization procedures. Among other things, these procedures call for the submission of
a hydrogeological study. A case-by-case approach is therefore applied. When a given
problem exceeds the scope of the project—for example, nonpoint source pollution of
groundwater at the regional level, or a high concentration of users in the same
region—, the volume of knowledge required to assess the impacts of the project is
much greater, and this can often become an extremely heavy economic burden for a single
project proponent. Currently, only groundwater collection structures that will be used to
supply drinking water distribution systems and spring water or mineral water bottling
plants are subject to government authorization.
Questions
All this information leads us to consider a number of questions.
-
 Do you have concerns about the quality of the drinking water in Québec, i.e.
- The appearance of the water?
- The taste of the water?
- The smell of the water?
- Potential contamination of the water by toxic products?
- Microbiological contamination?
- Do you feel you receive sufficient information on water quality from the authorities
concerned?
- What water-related health risks do you consider to be the most important?
- Do you believe the quality of Québec’s drinking water is threatened?
- Should analysis of the water captured by every new groundwater collection structure be
made compulsory?
- In view of the importance of groundwater for the economic and demographic growth of
Québec’s regions, should we give priority to groundwater uses on the basis of local
demands or according to criteria established for Québec as a whole?
- Would it be appropriate to favour groundwater capture management at the aquifer level?
If so, how could the local players be involved in this exercise?
- Would it be appropriate for all groundwater captures, regardless of their extent and
purpose, to be subject to a priori authorization in order to measure their impact
on the resource? If controls of this nature were imposed on future captures, what would
happen to existing, unauthorized captures?
- Would it be appropriate to include an information, consultation or conciliation
mechanism in the authorization process, so as to avoid the tensions that may result from
the announcement of a major groundwater collection project?
- Should groundwater uses be taken into account in land development plans? If so,
preference should be given to what approaches to facilitate the work of the planners?
- Is the the legal status of groundwater satisfying? Would it be appropriate to change it?
If so, in what context should the change occur, and what should be done to recognize the
rights exercised by current users?
- Very few municipalities operating groundwater-fed distribution systems have established
sanitary protection zones around their collection structures. Would it be advisable to
encourage the municipalities to make more use of this protective measure? If so, what
could they do to reconcile the past (existing activities) with the present
(newly-established sanitary protection zones )?
- In view of the cost involved in producing hydrogeological maps, should the production of
such maps be given priority only in regions where specific problems exist? If so, who
should undertake the mapping process?
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