Citizen groups claim to have sent a formal notice to the Quebec Minister of the Environment to “act and take responsibility to stop the contamination of the Stablex factory-dump in Blainville and downstream.”
In a press release sent Wednesday to the media, groups of citizens, including former PQ minister Martine Ouellet, announced a formal notice that they would have sent to Minister Benoit Charette.
They are asking him to stop the contamination of Stablex Canada, which operates an industrial waste treatment center in Blainville, in the Laurentians.
These groups rely in particular on samples taken by citizens in the streams and ditches surrounding the site of Stablex’s activities and which would demonstrate the presence of contaminants.
The samples analyzed by ecotoxicology specialist Daniel Green appear to show the worrying presence of cadmium, copper and arsenic.
The Canadian Press was unable to confirm the conclusions of these analyses.
The citizens argue that on September 8, 2023, the minister received a recommendation from the BAPE “to reject the project to redevelop cell 6 of Stablex and that in view of the contamination, everything continues as before”.
Expansion project
The Stablex industrial waste treatment center includes “a treatment plant, four closed landfill cells and a fifth in operation”, as described by the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE) l last fall.
The waste processed by Stablex is “residual hazardous materials, contaminated soils and non-hazardous materials with properties of concern for the environment”, partly imported from the United States and other Canadian provinces.
The company intends to create a sixth landfill cell on land it wants to acquire from the City of Blainville.
In a decision rendered in September 2023, the BAPE commission of inquiry wrote to the Minister of the Environment that it considered “this project to be premature and recommended, therefore, not to authorize it”.
To justify its recommendation, the commission argued that it was necessary to consider “the exceptional ecological value of certain sensitive natural environments of the location”.
Also, the promoters justify the project in particular because it would reduce certain nuisances for neighboring residences by locating the landfill cell further away, therefore outside the land currently in operation by Stablex.
But the BAPE commission wrote in its report that it is of the opinion that cell no. 6 proposed “presents no benefit in terms of reducing nuisances” such as noise, odors, heavy traffic and air quality.
The citizens behind the formal notice are also concerned by “the absence of a hydrogeological assessment, independent of the developer, on the current state of the water tables under the dump and that of the surface water downstream of the stream Lockhead and from the Chien River to the Mille Îles River.
Also, they are concerned that “the lack of social acceptability of this project” arouses little consideration from elected officials.
The political party “Mouvement Blainville”, the Rivière-du-Nord Landfill Alert Coalition, Climat Québec and the Coalition of Blainville Citizens against cell no. 6 of Stablex, are among the signatories of the formal notice which would have been sent to the minister.