Residents of an Ile-Bizard trailer park community say they’ve been forced to boil their drinking water for years and this spring’s floods have made a bad situation even worse.

“We are not treated like everybody,” said resident Louise Landry. “We’re treated like third class.”

Landry and her husband bought their mobile home and rented land in the park 11-years-ago as a cheap place to live when they weren’t travelling. They said they enjoyed the safety offered by a community who watched out for each other.

While the couple was told the park draws its water from a well, what they weren’t told is that the quality of the water is questionable.

While the environment ministry claims the water is clean, Montreal’s public health department has advised residents to boil it before consuming.

The concern is that the water could be contaminated due to regular breaks in the water and sewer pipes.

Landry said upon learning this, they called the landlord and borough repeatedly, only seeing results at the beginning of last winter. She said other residents didn’t join their campaign out of fear of retribution by the landlord.

“Only in November was he pushed,” she said. “He didn’t have a choice, brought the pipes to another sewer but before it was in the lake.”

Borough Mayor Normand Marinacci said the situation is under control.

“I tried to convince the minister of environment that they should monitor the work so that it will be done properly and it seems that it was,” he said.

However, the province’s severe flooding did more than damage thousands of homes. Landry said it caused the sewers to back up, raising fears of severe contamination in the park’s drinking water.

“We don’t have healthy water and we don’t have healthy air,” said Landry. “We can’t live that way.”

The park’s owner could not be reached for comment. Marinacci said he’s committed to finding a solution and has not ruled out fining the landlord. He also said he would work to change a bylaw to allow residents to raise their mobile homes to protect against flooding.

“We can make some pressure on the owner to deliver some services,” he said.

CTV Montreal was unable to contact the landlord for comment.