The company Les Sols Verelli Inc. “deliberately misled” municipal and provincial authorities by backfilling a former sand pit in Mercier with soil contaminated with hydrocarbons and arsenic while knowing that it did not have the right to do so, concluded the Superior Court, which ordered it to decontaminate the site and dismissed its countersuit for damages against the City.
The case began in 2016, with the authorization granted by the Commission de protection du territoire agricole du Québec (CPTAQ) to backfill and restore the old sandpit, an operation that must be carried out with soils containing no contaminants from human activities, according to Quebec regulations, due to the sensitive nature of these geological environments.
But it was the City of Mercier, and not the CPTAQ or the Ministry of the Environment, that fought to enforce this provincial regulation, deplores Mayor Lise Michaud, in a heartfelt plea calling on Quebec to no longer abandon municipalities to their own devices in environmental matters (see other text).
INFOGRAPHIC THE PRESS
A map showing the location of the old Mercier sandpit
The former sandpit is owned by the company “9340-4234 Québec inc.”, which belongs to Sols Verelli, and the latter carries out the backfilling activities; the two companies are established at the same address in Châteauguay and are managed by Stéphane Laberge and Michel Bergevin. Mr. Bergevin was convicted in 2017 of corruption after he tried to pay a bribe to the mayor of Châteauguay at the time of the events, a conviction that the Quebec Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada subsequently refused to review.
Read “A very mild sentence” for corruption in Châteauguay”
In 2019, the City of Mercier noted that Les Sols Verelli was importing soil onto the site without obtaining its authorization, thereby contravening municipal regulations, and then discovered that some of the imported soil came from the Châteauguay industrial park; it therefore suspected that it was contaminated soil, which would contravene provincial regulations.
500,000
Quantity, in tonnes, of soil from the Châteauguay industrial park that was transported to the site of the former sand pit in 2018 and 2019
Source: Superior Court of Quebec
Tests carried out by a specialist company reveal the presence in these soils of petroleum hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and even metals, including arsenic – the levels detected are higher than criterion “A”, considered to be soil free of contamination of human origin, and sometimes higher than criterion “B”, which is the limit for allowing residential uses, for example.
In spring 2020, a court ruling ordered Sols Verelli to stop importing contaminated soil to the site.
The City continued its efforts to have the company ordered to decontaminate the site, which itself claimed more than $440,000 in damages from the municipality, which it accused of having behaved wrongfully and abusively towards it.
Hidden information
Ironically, Sols Verelli’s countersuit showed that the company had withheld information from authorities.
Analysis of the invoices presented by the company to justify the amounts claimed revealed that it was claiming reimbursement for a much higher number of chemical analyses than what had been presented to the City as part of the monitoring of imported soils.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
In spring 2020, a court ruling ordered Sols Verelli to stop importing contaminated soil to the site.
Les Sols Verelli acknowledged before the court that it only transmitted to the City the results of analyses of soils that were not contaminated and that it did not transmit the results of analyses of contaminated soils.
“Mr. Laberge’s behavior clearly demonstrates his intention to not respect his legal obligations and to continue his illegal activities in disregard of public interest laws,” wrote Judge Tiziana Di Donato.
The defendants [ont] acted in bad faith in the context of their contractual relationship with the City, the Ministry of the Environment and the CPTAQ.
Excerpt from the judgment
Les Sols Verelli further argued that even if it had violated Quebec regulations, it was not up to the City of Mercier to intervene, believing that this power falls under the Ministry of the Environment.
“This argument is not well founded,” replied the judge, considering that the Environmental Quality Act is “clear as to the interest and right of a municipality to seek an injunction.”
Judgment on appeal
The judgment, rendered in April and then unnoticed, was appealed by the company, a request that the City of Mercier wants to block; the case will return to court on August 5.
“A judgment, there is no truth in it,” he declared to The Press Stéphane Laberge, of Sols Verelli, adding that “justice is not always fair.”
“The picture is a little more nuanced, it seems to me, than what we see in the judgment,” says his lawyer, Roger Paiement, who considers it “a little questionable” to order the complete decontamination of the site because there is contamination in places.
Me Paiement adds that certain permits granted by the City to its client authorized the use of soils containing contaminants and that the contamination observed is low.
“The judge does not say that it is a question of assessing the danger, it is a question of respecting the regulations,” retorts the City’s lawyer, Antonin Roy.
The restoration of the old sandpit was very profitable for the company, which thus took the soil from other companies that wanted to get rid of it precisely because it was contaminated, he says.
” [C’est une façon] to make money from land that is no longer used, said Mr.e Roy: You can say it’s sandpit restoration, but you’re not doing it for the environment, it’s an economic activity.”