The Assomption Sud–Longue-Pointe sector in Montreal will not be subject to a health impact assessment (HIA), as requested in September by doctors, public health specialists and environmentalists. The main industrial project that is being prepared for it is “too advanced”, says the Regional Public Health Department (DRSP) of Montreal.
The project in question is the Ray-Mont Logistiques intermodal container transhipment platform. In early November, Quebec gave the green light to this initiative aimed at handling up to 1,500 containers per day and storing up to 5,000. heat islands in the neighborhood.
“An EIS must be carried out upstream of a project and, in this case, the project has already been accepted”, explains Jean Nicolas Aubé, spokesperson for the Regional Public Health Department. EIS must be completed before “decision-making” and “implementation” of proposals that may affect the health of residents of an area, he recalls.
“We would have liked that to happen, but we understand that the Ray-Mont Logistiques project is too advanced,” says Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment, who was one of the signatories of the request sent to the authorities at the end of September. “Too bad we’re getting to a point where it’s too late [pour une telle analyse]she adds. […] but it is not too late to try to improve the project. »
East Island Revitalization
Health impact assessments integrate different parameters — such as air pollution, heat islands, noise, access to nature, the possibility of active transportation — that influence the health of populations. They assess the impact of the development of a sector as a whole. The reports signed by the DRSPs also include recommendations.
The DRSP thus closes the door to an analysis relating in particular to the Assomption Sud–Longue-Pointe sector, but, in response to questions from the To have toit opens the door to another option: it will assess the possibility, with its partners, of carrying out an HIA on the development of eastern Montreal as a whole.
The eastern part of the island is indeed preparing for a major transformation. Different levels of government want to take advantage of large lands, formerly devoted to the petrochemical industry, to create an “innovative and sustainable economic pole”. At the same time, a marine kerosene terminal project, along with a new section of pipeline, is arousing opposition in Montreal East, in particular because of the risks it could pose to public safety.
The DD Pétrin-Desrosiers welcomes with “great enthusiasm” the possibility, raised by Public Health, of carrying out an HIA on the whole of eastern Montreal. “The population there is exposed to higher environmental health risks than elsewhere on the island,” she argues.
A cumulative environmental analysis
The east of Montreal is also a “good candidate” for a regional environmental assessment (ERA), recalls Anne-Sophie Doré, lawyer at the Quebec Center for Environmental Law.
This type of analysis, which does not yet exist in Quebec law, would make it possible to better consider the cumulative repercussions on the environment of the various industrial development projects in a region. It would provide public decision-makers with information on the sensitivities and particularities of ecosystems and natural environments. Authorities could then make more environmentally informed decisions.
Me Doré is trying to convince the government to create the EERs as part of its National Policy on Architecture and Land Use Planning, for which an implementation plan is to be published this winter. She thinks that the Assomption Sud–Longue-Pointe sector could serve as a pilot project for this new approach, which is not so foreign to existing Quebec legislation.
The whole of eastern Montreal could then be the subject of a first ERA in due form. “Now is the perfect time to gain knowledge about this sector in order to minimize the negative impacts of future projects,” says Mr.e Golden.
This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of 22 November.