Demolition debris. Construction residues. Pieces of plastic and glass. The manager of an ecocentre in Mirabel, Sterling Recycling Service (SRS), uses materials it receives to backfill agricultural land behind its sorting center in Saint-Canut in order to expand its activities, said discovered The duty. This practice contravenes Quebec agricultural standards.
For over a month, The duty followed the backfilling work carried out by SRS on agricultural land it owns in Saint-Canut, behind its sorting centre. The company, which manages one of Mirabel’s four ecocentres, is expanding its storage area, according to information provided by the City. Every year, nearly 4,300 residents of the municipality dump 1,250 metric tons of residual materials there.
Images that we captured with a drone on May 29 confirm the progress of the embankment work that SRS has been carrying out in agricultural areas for weeks. We see a bulldozer coming out of the sorting center dumping, in a cloud of dust, residues in a grove located near a stream.
Further on, another bulldozer sits on a plateau the area of which is the equivalent of nearly five football fields. For the past month, this tractor has been compacting construction and demolition debris there — concrete, bricks, fragments of toilet bowls, etc. — as well as a material composed of plastic residues, glass, wood shavings and styrofoam.
A few meters away lie about twenty heaps of earth which will soon be extended to cover these residues. “It looks like camouflage, because they hide the materials by burying them, by putting earth on top,” says Karel Ménard, director of the Quebec Common Front for ecological waste management.
In Quebec, backfilling in agricultural land can only be done with very good quality cultivable soil. Any other material is prohibited. No backfilling can be done without the green light from the Commission de protection du territoire agricole (CPTAQ) and without having been prescribed by an agronomist.
Without authorization in the green zone
Does Sterling Recycling Service have an authorization from the CPTAQ to carry out such work on its agricultural land? Owner Joé Miller did not respond to our interview requests. “He’s busy, he doesn’t have time, he’s overwhelmed,” replied a site manager, during the third attempt of the Duty.
For its part, the CPTAQ indicated by email “to have authorized the establishment of new platforms for the crushing of wood, the recovery of contaminated land, the sorting of dry materials and the crushing of concrete” on this land. However, it adds “that no authorization was granted for the backfill strictly speaking” and that it “did not authorize such materials for backfilling”.
Declining to comment further on this case, the Farmland Custodian explains that the embankment is normally intended for a return to agricultural condition and must be “heavily earthy and free of stumps, concrete, asphalt, construction residues or other debris”. The Commission assures that it “will never issue a permit” for the backfilling of “agricultural land with such materials”.
The operation is huge. It’s not just a little pile that we hide in the back of a row. It is done in a systematic way, in an almost industrial way. I can’t understand why no one raised the flag, that the city or the Department of the Environment weren’t made aware.
The duty submitted photos and videos of SRS activities to six experts from the waste materials and agronomy sectors. All confirm that the materials used should rather be sent to a center to be recycled or to a technical landfill, where what cannot be recycled is sent.
“We really have the impression that they are on a landfill site and that they manage their various materials to be disposed of by reshaping the landscape as they please”, launches with astonishment Sébastien Sauvé, professor of environmental chemistry and vice-dean at the University of Montreal.
“It’s really worrying when it happens in an agricultural area and we backfill near a stream with unknown impacts on the surrounding wetlands, on the water quality of the stream and groundwater. adds this specialist in water and environmental contaminants.
“It’s not just a little pile that we hide”
In May, the City of Mirabel renewed a contract with SRS for the management of the ecocentre. The three-year deal is worth $331,500. The municipality assured the Duty that she “was not aware” of the backfilling activities taking place behind the Saint-Canut ecocentre.
Municipal inspectors were dispatched to the sorting center the same day that The duty tried unsuccessfully to speak to the mayor of Mirabel, Patrick Charbonneau. During this visit, SRS told city officials that it had “certain authorizations to fill with inert materials,” wrote Valérie Sauvé, director of communications for the City of Mirabel, by email.
The municipal administration indicates that the company has a valid certificate of authorization from the Ministry of the Environment for work to expand its storage area. The ministry did not respond to Duty regarding SRS at the time of this writing.
Moreover, Sterling Recycling Service did not apply for a permit from the municipality for this work. “This is how we can check that everything is done within the area authorized by the CPTAQ and with authorized materials,” writes M.me Safe.
She maintains that the municipal authorities are taking “all the means at their disposal” to enforce the regulations. The site of the ecocentre is visited “several times a week” by the Corporation for the protection of the environment of Mirabel, a company affiliated with the City whose mayor presides, according to the Register of companies.
“Further verifications will certainly be carried out in the days to come, and if necessary, measures will be taken,” she adds.
That an ecocentre manager is the source of such backfilling activities in agricultural areas fuels cynicism, saddens Karel Ménard, of the Quebec Common Front for Ecological Waste Management.
“Especially since the operation is huge. It’s not just a little pile that we hide in the back of a row. It is done in a systematic way, in an almost industrial way, deplores Mr. Ménard, who attributes part of the responsibility to the authorities. I cannot understand why no one raised the flag, that the City or the Ministry of the Environment were not informed. »
Mr. Ménard points out that this backfilling contrasts with the environmental claims of SRS. On its website, Joé Miller’s company presents itself as a “pioneer in the field of recycling and recovery”. Its “avant-garde” approach, we can read, would “avoid the burial of waste”.
SRS has already had trouble with the CPTAQ in the past. In 2014 and 2015, a Commission lawyer sent notices of orders relating to the cutting of maple trees on 1.35 hectares, the equivalent of nearly 20% of the sugar bush located at the southern end of agricultural land owned by the company.
For this cut, the company not having complied with the requirements, including that of carrying out a forest expertise, the CPTAQ ordered it to produce a forest engineer’s report and to reforest the maple grove. To date, the company has still not complied with the requirements in this file.