Air contamination in Rouyn-Noranda | Go or stay?

The arsenic that poisons the air of Rouyn-Noranda raises many questions in the shadow of the Horne Foundry: to leave or to stay? Some have already fled the chimneys, but packing up is not easy for others. The Press went to meet them.

Text: Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

Photos: Edouard Plante-Fréchette
The Press

(Rouyn-Noranda) “We often think about it,” says Mélissa Milhomme about the idea of ​​leaving the Notre-Dame district.

The young mother, her husband Maxime Leblanc and their four children live one block from the Horne Foundry.

But finding another home is difficult in Rouyn-Noranda, where the vacancy rate is at a historic low of 0.3%, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“You’re lucky if you have a rent”, sums up Maxime.

Especially since with children, “immediately, you are disqualified, you do not get called back”, he laments, while we hear the whistle of a train performing maneuvers on the ground. of the foundry.

The little family was enjoying the sun outside when passing The PressMonday, a rare day when “it doesn’t taste like mine,” says Maxime’s father, who lives in the house next door.

The established expression, in Rouyn-Noranda, describes “the taste of sulfur in the mouth” caused by emissions from the foundry, on certain days, depending on atmospheric conditions, explains Mélissa.

Representatives of the foundry even sometimes come by to offer vouchers to have the cars damaged by the toxic fallout cleaned, treated and even repainted, Maxime complains.

“It’s all around the head, that’s from the forehead!” “, he launches.

“If we get sick, they don’t treat us,” adds Mélissa.

The young couple is also juggling the idea of ​​going out of town, but the rents are expensive and such a decision would have consequences for the family ecosystem.

The couple believe that the real solution would be for the foundry to comply with the Quebec standard that limits arsenic concentrations to 3 nanograms per cubic meter of air (ng/m⁠^⁠3), rather than the special permission granted by Quebec to generate concentrations of 100 ng/m⁠^⁠3 because it was in operation before the adoption of the standard.

“It’s an acquired right to kill the world little by little!” », indignant Maxime.

Far from prevailing winds

Staying near the foundry was not an option for Jean-François Beaulé and Janie Bolduc.

“The taste of mine, I am no longer capable”, launches Janie, whom The Press met on the construction site of the couple’s future home in Évain, about ten kilometers west of Rouyn-Noranda.

The choice of this small locality, now merged with Rouyn, is no accident: it is not located in the corridor of the prevailing winds that carry contaminants from the Horne Foundry.

“We don’t want to have it on our heads anymore,” says Jean-François.

The couple bought this bucolic land a little over two years ago, after learning the results of the biomonitoring study conducted by the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Public Health Department on the arsenic impregnation of the population of the Notre-Dame district, in which he had participated.

“Me, I had four times the dose [comparativement à la population non exposée d’Amos] “says Jean-François.

Janie and Jean-François had previously chosen to settle in the Notre-Dame district to be near the hospital; she works there as a nurse and he was a respiratory therapist there for 20 years.

Their two children, now teenagers, were born with a low weight, the last of which by emergency cesarean section at 36 weeks of pregnancy.

Arsenic concentrations in the air around the smelter, which exceeded 1000 ng/m⁠^⁠3 in the early 2000s, they may have had something to do with it, today the couple believes, who remembers that “at the time, we didn’t ask ourselves the question”.

The couple can’t wait to settle into their new home after the holidays, if all goes well.

“It’s going to be amazing! says Jean-François, evoking the pleasant smell that emanates from the place when it rains, while his daughter Adèle returns with wild blueberries picked in the field.

Janie is also very enthusiastic, but anticipates “a mourning for the city”, which she greatly appreciates, despite the inconveniences that have become too numerous.

“Rouyn-Noranda, if you remove the foundry, it’s an exceptional city,” says Jean-François.

A worried doctor

Rouyn-Noranda’s air quality must change if the city wants to avoid seeing too many residents pack up and succeed in attracting the workforce it says it misses so much, believe many Rouynorandiens and Rouynorandiennes.

“It doesn’t make sense for it to continue like this”, launches the D^D Clodel Naud-Bellavance, a young family doctor from Rouyn, who has been practicing there since 2017.

She herself has already considered moving elsewhere, she says.

“It worries me like any inhabitant of the city”, says the doctor, mother of two young children.

Rather than leaving, Clodel Naud-Bellavance chose to speak publicly “to change things”, especially since the publication, in May, of data from the Regional Public Health Department showing that life expectancy is more lower in Rouyn-Noranda than elsewhere in Quebec and that cases of lung cancer, intrauterine growth retardation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are more frequent there.

Quebec must intervene so that the standards are the same in Rouyn-Noranda as elsewhere in Quebec, for all contaminants, pleads the young woman, who is one of the signatories of the open letter sent Sunday by about fifty doctors from Rouyn-Noranda and elsewhere in Abitibi-Témiscamingue to Premier François Legault.

“We don’t want there to be a different standard here, which is higher than elsewhere, it’s not fair for our population,” she said.

The doctor regrets that the polluting emissions from the Horne Foundry affect the “extraordinary quality of life” that prevails in Rouyn-Noranda.

“We have this industry that tarnishes the portrait of our beautiful region. »