The company Sanimax, which “recycles” carcasses leaving slaughterhouses in the province, will be able to continue to discharge large quantities of ammonia into the sewers of eastern Montreal until May 2024, ruled justice.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
The City of Montreal’s refusal to grant an environmental exemption to the renderer was ill-justified and must therefore be annulled, according to the Superior Court.
As the court considers that a new refusal – well justified this time – is inevitable, it gives the company about twenty months to comply with municipal standards on water contamination.
“Correctives must be put in place at the source,” wrote Judge Frédéric Pérodeau, partially agreeing with both parties. The ammonia released in Sanimax’s industrial processes “ends up directly in the receiving environment, namely the St. Lawrence River,” he notes.
Sanimax has been at the heart of a conflict with the City and residents of Rivière-des-Prairies for several years. The latter complain of bad smells, occasional spills of carcass parts in their neighborhood and releases into the environment. Sanimax argues that it plays an essential role in the agri-food chain and that it reuses carcass pieces that would otherwise end up at the bottom of a landfill.
Ill-justified decision
One of the discharges from the Rivière-des-Prairies plant is a form of ammonia, produced by the decomposition of the millions of animal carcasses treated by Sanimax each year.
Sanimax’s ammonia discharges “significantly” exceed the standards set by municipal by-law in 2008. After a few years of tolerance, the City hardened its tone in 2015. The same year, Sanimax submitted a request for exemption, in order to be able to continue to exceed the rejection standard legally.
“To date, the City of Montreal has adopted the position of not agreeing to any exemption agreement from the ammoniacal nitrogen standard,” the municipal officials simply reply, refusing the request.
However, a public decision-maker cannot make important decisions by completely omitting to justify them, underlined Judge Pérodeau. The City’s refusal “suffers from serious shortcomings”, he wrote, before canceling it. Especially since Sanimax has collaborated well with the City and is trying to find solutions.
In return, the magistrate granted the City a request for an injunction forcing Sanimax to stop exceeding the standards for the discharge of ammonia into the water. The judge quotes an expert saying that this rejection “equivalent to that of a city of 120,000 inhabitants”. “Sanimax spills necessarily have repercussions on the receiving environment and the environment,” he notes, since the treatment plant is unable to treat them.
An immediate application of this injunction would have forced a rapid closure of the plant, which would have completely disrupted the Quebec agri-food sector, wrote the judge.
Sanimax was delighted with the decision: “This new judgment confirms that the City of Montreal has once again adopted a counter-productive attitude towards us. Well aware of our responsibilities in the agri-food chain, the Court confirms to us that we have acted diligently by deploying numerous efforts to reach a solution,” the company said in a statement.
The City declined to comment on the Superior Court’s decision.