The receipt of a letter from the Rivières Foundation as well as the tensions that have arisen in recent days have pushed the Municipality of Batiscan to postpone the meeting planned for Monday night between the elected officials and the Association for Citizen Accessibility in Batiscan Beaches.
The Municipality wants to take the time to study the information received from the Foundation and conduct the verifications.
Reached by phone, the Director General of the Municipality, Maxime Gervais-Déziel, added that a montage of photos that circulated on social networks and that invited citizens to go to the Batiscan beach raised tensions and did not create a climate conducive to discussion. He said that this incident is also part of the reasons why the meeting was canceled on Monday.
The mayor and councilors of the municipality are there again DESIRE
to meet the members of the Association, assured the general director. Elected officials want to meet with the group before the next municipal council meeting, scheduled for October 2.
Mayor Christian Fortin still does not want to comment on the situation publicly before meeting with the Association.
The Batiscan beach is public, according to the Rivières Foundation
The Rivières Foundation claims to be looking into the issue of access to the Batiscan beach, at the request of a group of citizens. He concluded that it is clear that the Batiscan beach is public and therefore does not belong to the private owners who live nearby.
The Foundation believes that The claim of the neighboring owners (that the beach is private) comes from a bad understanding of the marketing practices (and) it seems to us that it is based on the confusion associated with the terms used in the original survey
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Excerpts from the letter of September 11, 2023 from the Rivières Foundation addressed to the mayor and municipal councilors in the true copy
Some owners along the Batiscan river continue to claim that the land given to them by the Ministry of the Environment extends to the deep waters of St. Lawrence River. This is not correct, because the Ministry of the Environment is still the sole owner of all the land located on the Batiscan coast. The shoreline, within the meaning of the law, refers to the banks located between the high water mark and the river. In Batiscan, the beach is between 15 and 18 meters deep. Since the State is still the owner, no one can claim to have acquired the land.
Land surveyors Châteauneuf Tousignant McClure completed survey work on Batiscan beach in 2013 and 2016 for the municipality of Batiscan. In both cases, the company determined that the high water mark was located at a distance between 15 and 18 meters from the shore. The company also established where the boundary of the waterfront properties is located, which is a good distance from the river, despite what the owners think.
The organization is also concerned about the decision of the Municipality of Batiscan to block access to the beach which now prevents people with reduced mobility from going there. The Municipality has an obligation to ensure that everyone has access to public spaces in its territory whenever possible, which is clearly the case here.
supports the Rivières Foundation.
The Foundation also criticized an intervention by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ). On September 8, he allegedly stopped a family building sandcastles on the beach. He asked the municipal council to talk to the SQ so that this kind of injustice never happens again
.
