Montreal is asking people to reduce water use in a major way.
At a news conference Friday, officials said new restrictive measures are necessary as it carries out repairs on a key water main on Atwater Avenue.
An advisory is in place for almost the entire island, targeting about 1.2 million people.
“We need a collective effort to reduce drinking water consumption,” said Claude Pinard, president of the city’s executive committee.
“The City of Montreal will obviously do its part, but that won’t be enough. We’ll need the help of the entire population of the Montreal metropolitan area.”
Officials are asking residents and businesses to limit watering outdoor plants, not leave taps running and take short showers instead of baths.
Even turning off the water while brushing your teeth would help, Pinard said.
“A complete ban on watering could even be considered eventually,” he said.
City officials say inspections and monitoring of the major water distribution pipe under Atwater Avenue showed the infrastructure needs urgent intervention to prevent a potential break.
The pipe will need to be shut down for several weeks while repairs are carried out. Officials say the work comes at a difficult time because two other major water conduits elsewhere in the network are already offline for reconstruction or rehabilitation work.
With summer approaching — the period of highest water demand of the year — officials say the city’s drinking water infrastructure will be under significant pressure.
The city itself will cut out all non-essential water use including some park fountains and pipe rinsing.
According to the city, preventive sewer cleaning, continuous pipe purging and flow tests during fire hydrant inspections will also be suspended while crews focus on maintaining water supply across the network.
The city will also prioritize repairing leaks as quickly as possible to reduce water loss.
Overall, the hope is to cut down on daily water use in the city by a little less than 10 per cent.
The city is asking for people’s co-operation and says the measures in place are preventive as it monitors the situation.
Officials said they could step up enforcement and fine those who don’t comply if the situation becomes critical.
Alan DeSousa, Saint-Laurent’s borough mayor and a member of the executive committee, said the city is trying to be “proactive” to avoid problems this summer.
“We don’t want to be in a reactionary mode,” he said at the news conference. “We don’t want to be putting out fires. We want to prevent fires.”
The situation in Montreal comes as Quebec politicians and municipalities are increasingly raising concerns about aging water infrastructure across the province.
On Friday, Municipal Affairs Minister Samuel Poulin said Quebec is “ripe for a reflection” on drinking water use and pricing. He said some municipalities that installed water metres significantly reduced water consumption and avoided costly expansions to filtration plants.
However, he said the Quebec government is not currently planning to force municipalities to adopt water pricing systems.
A recent report commissioned by the Union of Quebec Municipalities recommended expanding the use of water pricing to help fund repairs to aging infrastructure. The report estimated the maintenance deficit for municipal water infrastructure and pavement over pipes reached nearly $50 billion in 2025.
Liberal MNA Marie-Claude Nichols noted municipalities across Quebec are responsible for more than 101,000 kilometres of water and sewer pipes and more than 10,000 related facilities.
She added that 43 municipalities have had to pause housing projects because wastewater treatment systems lacked capacity, preventing the construction of roughly 36,000 housing units.
