Horne Foundry Emissions | Green light for a public consultation

The Legault government will finally hold a public consultation on the Horne Foundry’s next pollution permit, after initially planning not to do so.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

The renewal of the company’s ministerial authorization should at most be subject to “consultations and [d’] discussions with stakeholders, including the City of Rouyn-Noranda, the Ministry of Health and Social Services and the plant”, had indicated to The Press, Monday at the end of the day, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC), Sophie Gauthier.

“A consultation is not compulsory”, had then declared to The Press Rosalie Tremblay-Cloutier, press secretary to the Minister of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change, Benoit Charette.

The Environment Quality Act (LQE) effectively stipulates that only the first renewal of a ministerial authorization is subject to public consultation.

The renewal requested by the Horne Foundry would be its second, since its current authorization was issued in 2007 and renewed in 2017 — this document, which makes it possible to derogate from the ban on polluting provided for in the EQA, was previously called “attestation d ‘sanitation’.

Pressed with questions by The Pressthe Legault government finally let it be known on Tuesday that the general public would be consulted.

“Although the law does not provide for public consultation during a certificate renewal, we do indeed intend to consult the public,” said Minister Charette’s press secretary.

“The form that this consultation will take will be revealed soon,” she added, adding that the foundry’s participation “is not confirmed at this stage.”

The Horne Foundry filed the application for renewal of its ministerial authorization on May 20, and the MELCC intends to issue it “during the fall of 2022. […] if the previous steps are carried out within the planned timeframe”.

An oversight by the legislator?

The absence of an obligation to consult for subsequent renewals seems to be an oversight by the legislator, believes lawyer Philippe Biuzzi, from the Center québécois du droit de l’environnement (CQDE).

The debates held on this point in the National Assembly show that a consultation was planned only for the first renewal “because it was taken for granted that the construction of the industrial establishment would first go through [le Bureau d’audiences publiques sur environnement, BAPE] “, he notes.

Since the EQA does not provide for the holding of a public consultation beyond the first renewal of the ministerial authorization, holding one could place the government in a delicate position vis-à-vis the company concerned, explains the lawyer.

“If there is no obligation, it could be contested,” he said, adding at the same time that such a contestation would however be difficult for the Horne Foundry to defend publicly.

The Horne Foundry would like to emit 20 times more than the standard

The Horne Foundry proposes to limit its arsenic emissions to a threshold 20 times higher than the maximum Quebec standard, says Quebec.

The company would have indicated in the application for renewal of its ministerial authorization that it could lower the concentrations of arsenic in the air to 60 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m⁠^⁠3), Prime Minister François Legault’s office said on Tuesday.

This proposal “is still too high” in the eyes of the government, while the Quebec limit is 3 ng/m⁠^⁠3 – the foundry has been subject since 2021 to a limit of 100 ng/m⁠^⁠3.

“We’ve asked the company to go back to the drawing board and come up with a solution with a lower threshold than what’s being proposed,” he told The Press Ewan Sauves, press secretary for Prime Minister François Legault, reiterating that Quebec does not rule out forcing the closure of the plant, “if the company is not able to reduce its emissions and get closer to the Quebec standard “.

The Horne Foundry responded in a statement that the target of 60 ng/m^⁠3 “represents the maximum threshold” of an action plan submitted last winter and claims to have indicated to the government when filing its request that it continues to seek other ways of reducing its emissions.

The request for renewal of the ministerial authorization of the Horne Foundry does not make it possible to determine what the Foundry would have proposed to the government – Quebec finally transmitted Tuesday to The Press a heavily redacted version of the document, after refusing to do so for several weeks.

Neither the Horne Foundry, nor the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, nor the Prime Minister’s Office indicated where the company’s proposal was.