Could you enlighten me? Why do we have to pay to decontaminate land that belongs or belonged to big oil companies that make huge profits? However, there are laws regarding the liability of polluters. – René Cyr, Repentigny
Several readers reacted to our article published on Tuesday, November 14 relating to the creation by Quebec at a cost of 100 million of the Société de mise envaluation des terrains en l’est de Montréal to acquire, decontaminate and resell contaminated industrial land. Fondaction will manage it.
The new organization’s first efforts will be focused on the immense land of at least 650,000 square meters, owned by the oil company Esso, located in Montreal East. Due to its size and its location between Sherbrooke and Notre-Dame streets, its revitalization is essential to the redevelopment of the eastern part of the territory.
But why doesn’t Esso pay to clean up its own mess? Essentially, Esso, which closed its Montreal East refinery in 1983, benefits from an acquired rights clause, we understand.
“Esso was not required to rehabilitate its land, because the installations were dismantled before the entry into force of the Environmental Quality Act (LQE), in 2003,” responds by email Linda Soh, communications analyst at the City of Montreal-East.
“This is not the case for Shell [fermeture de sa raffinerie en 2010], she continues. When the former Shell refinery in Montreal East was dismantled, the land had to be the subject of a rehabilitation plan under the EQA, since the dismantling was carried out after 2003.”
A first policy
Environmental law is relatively young in Quebec. The first efforts date back to 1972 with the first version of the Environmental Quality Act (LQE), which at the time did not include any provisions on contaminated land, indicates the essay prepared by Stefanie Wlodarczyk in January 2021, entitled Assessment of the legal regime governing contaminated landas part of his master’s studies in environment at the University of Sherbrooke.
The rehabilitation of contaminated soils was the subject of a first policy in 1988, but it is non-binding.
The polluter pays principle appears in Bill 65, approved on June 22, 1990. It constitutes a first effort aimed at integrating rules on contaminated soil into the EQA. “The success is mixed: the majority of the articles of the bill will never be proclaimed in force,” wrote Me Jean Piette in 2015 during a conference entitled “The modernization of the environmental authorization regime”.
The contaminated soil rehabilitation policy was modernized in 1998, but the approach adopted in this second policy remains based on flexibility, “adherence being based on voluntary service, in accordance with the preferred approach of that time”, underlines Mme Wlodarczyk in his essay.
The 2003 reform
We had to wait for Bill 72, presented in December 2001 and adopted in the spring of 2002, to see the Quebec government give itself the power to force the polluter to decontaminate his property. At the same time, the government adopted a series of binding regulations regarding the management of contaminated land after the entry into force of PL 72 on 1er March 2003.
“Section 31.43 empowers the Minister to order the development of a rehabilitation plan and an implementation schedule with respect to land. This provision gives broad powers to the minister and allows him to require the rehabilitation of land,” gives Stefanie Wlodarczyk as an example.