by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Montrealers lament: for an island, this place sucks for beaches.

But there's hope. Every time somebody orders a $400 truckload of Quebec sand for industrial or other purposes, up go the chances that somewhere, a new beach will appear. Since 1977, provincial environment law has forced operators of sand quarries to supply a plan for their site once the grains of sand have been scooped up and shipped out.

Sandy industrial deserts, once home to heavy excavation machinery, are increasingly being emptied and turned into little slices of splashy aquatic paradise.

"We were operating a sand quarry here and we had to make a promise to the Minister of the Environment concerning the purpose for this place once we were done picking up the sand," says Julien Proulx, former owner of the quarry where the Pointe Calumet Beach Club now sits. "Once empty, water from the Lake of Two Mountains rose through from the ground. I think there's many such private beaches around here that have sprung up like that."

On the site of Proulx's one-time arid sandpit now sits a half-kilometre by half-kilometre, man-made 20-foot-deep lake where thousands of people, from families to club kids, congregate on weekends and perfect water sports in the agua.

Maintenance of the man-made beach is straightforward. "We've got big propellers at the bottom of the lake to bring up the water like a windmill or a fan. It keeps the water moving and helps oxygenate it," says Yan Georgeff, president of the eight-year-old club.

Quebec is home to hundreds of fast-depleting sand quarries, according to provincial Environment Ministry rep Daniel Leblanc, but no poll has been taken on what individual owners have promised to create once the dunes become empty pits. Leblanc says that anybody is legally allowed to create a lake on their land without any special permit. Permission is only required when it flows into a river or other streams. However, man-made beaches, like the natural variety, are subject to random and frequent water tests.

The South Shore town of Ste-Catherine has welcomed 200,000 people a year on its man-made public beach on land that originally served as a campground for Expo '67. The beach, enclosed from the St. Lawrence 11 years ago, pumps $8,000 worth of chlorine into its water each year to zap algae and other nuisances. The biggest challenge at the beach is to keep it clean from bird poop, as it sits on a path of bird migration, according to park director Rachelle Stringer.

Jean Drapeau Beach, unofficially known as Plage Doré and the city's best-known man-made one, receives up to 5,000 sunbathers a day since it was transformed from an Olympic basin in 1990. The island was built mainly on land taken from Atwater to St-Denis during the creation of the metro. Its five feet of water is filtered but not chlorinated, according to park communications official Hélène Girard, who notes that attendance is up this year.