After 10 months of paralysis, the construction sites of the two future compost plants in Montreal could resume shortly.
The City of Montreal reached an agreement last night with the company Veolia – in charge of construction – which provides for the resumption of work on the organic matter treatment centers in Saint-Laurent and Montreal East within a month. , has learned The Press.
“There was an agreement overnight with Veolia, which leads us to hold an extraordinary executive committee now,” said Valérie Plante’s cabinet at the start of the morning. The elected officials approved the agreement and the meeting ended around 9:30 a.m.
The City of Montreal had already put an additional 13 million on the table, then an additional 32 million last month in the hope of satisfying Veolia. In total, the budget for the two facilities reached 372 million before the agreement.
According to our information, the City does not have to release any new sums under the agreement. It would, however, waive a few million dollars in late fees by agreeing to wipe the slate clean and restart the meters with new delivery dates: August 31, 2024 for the Saint-Laurent composting center, May 26, 2025 for the biomethanation center in Montreal-East.
In July 2022, the Quebec construction firm EBC had completely deserted the two construction sites because it felt that it was not being paid adequately by Veolia. Last week, The Press revealed that many of EBC’s and Veolia’s subcontractors are also complaining about significant late payments. Several of them have taken their trailers and equipment out of the worksites, risking delays and costs during their reactivation.
110,000 tonnes of residue to be treated
The two organic matter treatment center projects have been in the news for years.
The Saint-Laurent facility, located on Henri-Bourassa Boulevard West, was to cost the city $175 million, a sum that includes its operation for the first five years. The construction site is currently 90% complete. The plant should be able to process 50,000 tonnes of table waste per year to make compost that can be used in agriculture.
The Montréal-Est facility, a biomethanization center, will be located on the site of the former Demix quarry, at the intersection of Avenue Broadway Nord and Highway 40. Its construction and operation for five first years were to cost 167 million in Montreal. The facility will swallow 60,000 tonnes of compost per year, according to the City.
Both projects suffered from significant delays and cost overruns. The City of Montreal must now export part of its organic matter to Ontario pending the finalization of the two facilities.
The contracts for their construction and operation were awarded in 2019 to Suez, a French company whose North American subsidiary was bought last year by its compatriot Veolia. This explains why the City of Montreal now has to deal with Veolia.
In 2021, the Auditor General of Montreal mentioned an “overall finding of cost overruns and non-compliance with the schedule” in the case of organic matter treatment centers (CTMO). “The CTMO construction project did not follow a sufficiently rigorous process that one would expect for a project of such complexity and scope,” she wrote.