The Mayor of Ritchot says construction activity is well ahead of last year's pace. Through the first six months of 2011, Mayor Bob Stefaniuk says 34 building permits have been issued worth $11.8 million. Compare that to 43 permits for $11.2 million for all of last year.

Mayor Stefaniuk says new homes are going up throughout Ritchot. "A lot of them are going up in Ste.Agathe. There's a few going up in the St.Adolphe area and quite a few in Ile des Chenes also. And basically a lot of rural homes too. So it's across the whole municipality generally." He adds many are large homes. "They usually are coming in around three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand dollar mark. So that's substantial homes."

The Mayor says this comes as a surprise. "I wasn't expecting it to be as busy as it is compared to last year. But nevertheless it shows you that the economy is healthy and we're happy to have this kind of activity going on in our municipality."

Mayor Stefaniuk says it's great to see that in spite of the municipality being located inside the flood zone, home builders are not letting that discourage them. "It is. Even though wherever there's homes, they're built above the ninety-seven level where all homes are protected to that level with community dikes and/ or individual floodproofing. So once in a while we lose a bit of access but this year we really didn't for very long and it turned out to be okay. So, in spite of the problems we have with flooding, people are still locating here and I think that's a very good sign and they're not putting themselves in unusual risk either." Mayor Stefaniuk is quick to add not all of the municipality is located inside a flood zone.

As for how long this growth can continue, Mayor Stefaniuk says "I know we're coming up with more housing developments in the near future and I would expect the activity to be increasing."