Residents of the Upper Pontiac were hit by a series of outages during last week’s heat wave and again over the weekend, leaving many upset with the state of the region’s electrical infrastructure.
L’Isle-aux-Allumettes Mayor Corey Spence estimated that there are about 3,400 people affected by the outages, spread out across Sheenboro, Chichester, Waltham, Allumettes and the upper part of Mansfield-et-Pontefract. He explained that part of the issue is the region’s odd electrical distribution set up. It is synchronized with the Ontario system, but can be supplied from Quebec when needed.
Spence said that he had been in contact with Hydro-Quebec, but was still waiting on their analysis of this most recent series of outages. He encouraged residents to file formal complaints with Hydro-Quebec, which he said would build a “paper trail” that local officials would be able to leverage in their discussions.
