Very toxic products | The Press

The assault took place early in the morning of June 27, 2020. Police officers dressed in waterproof suits, with masks and oxygen bottles, appeared in front of a huge ranch in Danville, in Estrie. They enter a farm building and proceed with extreme caution. The place is full of volatile chemicals. No agent wants to trigger an explosion by making one wrong move.

Then they see the overturned barrels.

The search carried out that day was the result of eight months of work. A team of specialized investigators from the Sûreté du Québec followed the trail of a methamphetamine production laboratory held in a remote corner of the small town of less than 4,000 inhabitants. The installations, operated by henchmen in the pay of the Hells Angels, are among the most imposing ever discovered in Quebec. They can produce tens of kilograms of synthetic drugs every week. The small production cell literally floods the Quebec market with “speed” tablets sold for a few dollars each.

Inside, several barrels appear to have been emptied of their contents into large vats, similar to those in mechanical workshops. These are connected to a pipe system that leads underground to a series of buried blue plastic barrels. The top walls of the barrels are perforated with small holes.

The system, rudimentary, seems intended to retain in the bottom of the container most of the solid materials evacuated by the laboratory. Liquid waste flows into the environment through holes in the top of the barrel when the level rises.

A Health Canada expert arrives on the scene. From the pipes, she draws what appears to be mercury chloride, a substance often used to cause a chemical reaction during the synthesis of methamphetamine. A product that is highly soluble in water, which remains in the environment for a long time and is “very toxic in the short and long term for the aquatic environment”, notes the expert. Its disposal must normally take place in specialized facilities.

In Danville, the product is simply returned to nature, near an artificial lake and a stream. Given the volumes of drug production observed by the police at this location, the risk of contamination is high. The Quebec Ministry of the Environment has been alerted.

Dead trees and absence of plants

The Press obtained an investigation summary produced by the Department of Environment’s Special Operations Unit at the Danville site. The document was filed at the Sherbrooke courthouse to justify the forcible entry onto the site and the carrying out of certain tests to determine whether there was reason to file criminal charges for environmental offences. “Preliminary information suggests that toxic or chemical products may have been released into the environment,” it reads.

According to the court document, the first Ministry inspector to arrive at the scene of the search noticed obvious “signs of environmental impacts” on the property. She notes the presence of dead trees and the absence of vegetation around the laboratory’s ventilation outlets, a sign that no plant is able to survive in the fumes escaping.

The inspector also undertakes to test the laboratory’s homemade filtration system. She runs water into the tanks inside, while a plumber inserts a camera through the pipes to the barrels buried beneath the earth. The water raises the liquid level in the barrels immediately. But soon after, the level goes down again, goes down again, then goes down again.

“Fifteen minutes later, the water level was lowered,” summarizes the Ministry document. Nothing waterproof in this system. Toxic products are certainly found in nature. »

On the ranch land, the police also discovered two heavy goods vehicle trailers which respectively contained 14 and 126 buckets filled with chemical waste. A handwritten note written by one of the site managers for the attention of one of the organization’s employees is captured: “Make sure that the barrels in which you put dumps (gray and liquid) are full. The fewer the better. »

In their document filed with the court, investigators say they have reasonable grounds to believe that the pollutant spills that took place “during the production of methamphetamine” violate the Environmental Quality Act. They note that “mercury chloride is the most dangerous product in the production of this narcotic”, but also list a series of other chemicals that could be involved.

In September 2022, a justice of the peace at the Sherbrooke courthouse authorized the Ministry to excavate the land to remove the buried barrels. Shortly after, a file was sent to the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), with the recommendation to lay charges against the operators of the site in connection with the damage to the environment. Currently, everything is being analyzed by prosecutors.

A first

“This is the first file of this type for which the Ministry is sending recommendations to the DPCP,” confirmed to The Press Frédéric Fournier, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment.

However, there could be others in the future, he suggests.

“The Ministry is aware of this problem and is trying to tackle all activities that are likely to emit contaminants into the environment. The Ministry continues to monitor the situation closely and is taking appropriate actions,” he said.

Police now estimate that methamphetamine pills have surpassed cocaine in popularity among Quebec users. Recently, after repeated hits by law enforcement, traffickers began importing methamphetamine from Mexico. But historically, Quebec is recognized as a major producer of synthetic drugs with a well-structured market around large laboratories controlled by organized crime.

A recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime highlights that this process generates five to ten tonnes of waste for every tonne of drugs obtained.

In the environment, these wastes “can have a significant effect on soil, water and air, as well as an indirect effect on organisms, animals and the food chain,” the report continues.

“The majority of global manufacturing of amphetamine and methamphetamine typically takes place in remote locations without water treatment,” specify the UN experts, who cite in particular the case of a synthetic drug laboratory in the Netherlands which dumped its waste into a stream, massively killing the fish, amphibians and invertebrates that lived there.

Significant income

The two managers of the Danville clandestine laboratory, Roxane Savard and Emmanuel Pereira, pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to the production of methamphetamine and received respective sentences of three years and seven years in penitentiary. If they are found guilty of violations of the Environmental Quality Actthey could be fined.

Their superiors within the drug trafficking network have not been arrested to date. The Sûreté du Québec confirms that they are affiliated with the Hells Angels, who control the vast majority of the methamphetamine supply in Quebec and derive significant income from it.

Other organizations can sometimes venture into the production of the popular drug, but they must pay a tax to the Hells, says Captain Ghislain Cossette of the Sûreté du Québec. “There is still a royalty system, if the control of production is not linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs,” he says.