page_title: Chicoutimi River
section_title: Course and hydrogeology
hierarchical_section_title: Chicoutimi River / Geography / Course and hydrogeology
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: La rivière Chicoutimi près du rang St-Paul
context_page_description: The Chicoutimi River is a watercourse of eastern Quebec, Canada. A tributary of the Saguenay River, which it meets in the city of Saguenay, it is the 26.2-kilometre-long main outlet of Kenogami Lake, which rises from a watershed of 3,390 square kilometres in the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve. Entirely located in the Chicoutimi borough of Saguenay, it is the most urbanized and dammed river in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean.
  Used by the Montagnais of the Saguenay River before the arrival of Europeans, it was at that time the first portage from the main access road to Lac Saint-Jean. In the 20th century, it was developed from its source to its mouth for hydropower purposes. In addition to being the source of drinking water for the Chicoutimi and Jonquière boroughs, this river has six dams. During the Saguenay flood in 1996, its surge caused significant damage to Laterrière and Chicoutimi.
context_section_description: The Chicoutimi River rises at Portage-des-Roches, in the Laterrière sector of the Chicoutimi borough at 150 m (490 ft) altitude and flows northeast towards Laterrière-Bassin where it is spanned by the Père-Honorat bridge. Leaving the rocky base and the steep relief of Portage-de-Roches, it then enters an alluvial and semi-alluvial plain up to dam de la Chute-Garneau where the landscapes on both banks alternate between residences and agricultural land for a little over ten kilometers.
  The Chute-Garneau dam is a watercourse retaining structure located on a rock base. Half a kilometer further on, route 170 crosses the river which then enters a more urbanized sector of the Chicoutimi borough. After having bypassed Pointe du Chien, it passes under Autoroute 70 and enters the Haut-Saguenay industrial park. The river then crosses the Pont-Arnaud dam and begins its increasingly rapid descent towards the Saguenay as the relief becomes increasingly steep. After passing under the Ulric Blackburn bridge (boulevard Barette) it flows into Lac Dubuc; the reservoir of the Chute-Blanchette dam. This retaining structure dries up the original rock bed of the river to divert it towards an underground water intake which supplies the S.P.C. ( Elkem Métal). The river then re-emerges in the historic site of the Pulperie de Chicoutimi and continues to descend to the Chicoutimi dam basin. Finally, it flows into the Saguenay River.
  The Chicoutimi River flows mainly in the Saguenay graben, a vast elevated valley that overlooks the lowlands surrounding the Saguenay River. The soils of this large depression are composed of Quaternary marine sediments, such as silt and clay, deposited at the end of the Pleistocene and during the beginning of the Holocene by the Laflamme Sea. During the last three kilometers when approaching the Saguenay river, opposite the landscape of the alluvial plain of Laterière, the river is encased in a series of gullies in which it sinks to 70 m (230 ft). The composition of the soils and the strong acceleration of the runoff caused by unevenness in this sector are the main causes causing the river to cut, through marine clay, an incision from 10 to 20 m (66 ft) until the parent rock giving it the appearance of a torrent.
caption: The Chicoutimi River crossing agricultural land shortly before the Chute-Garneau
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