Lac-Mégantic | Work on the bypass begins

Preliminary work on the bypass is beginning in Lac-Mégantic, despite opposition from several elected officials. They will be carried out by the City, but paid for by Ottawa. An agreement reached with Canadian Pacific (CP) will also make it possible to launch a call for tenders with a view to hiring the contractor who will build the track.

“This is the start of something really big.” I think we are getting closer to the day when the people of Lac-Mégantic […] will be able to say that it is possible to have a little more tranquility, peace. This is what we all collectively want,” explained Federal Minister of Transport, Pablo Rodriguez, confirming the news during a press conference on Friday.

He argued that governments “have a social, political and human responsibility to carry out this project, to do it the right way”.

This all comes almost two months after the sad tenth anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, which was commemorated this summer in the presence of several politicians. On the night of July 5 to 6, 2013, a train carrying crude oil derailed and then exploded in the city center of this municipality of some 5,000 inhabitants in Estrie, causing the death of 47 people.

“Every time the train passes through town, it brings back memories. It’s a big train with a package of dangerous materials that still passes here in the city center,” lamented Pablo Rodriguez.

Ottawa will pay, Lac-Mégantic will achieve

The Trudeau government will fund preliminary work on municipal infrastructure. We still do not know the exact cost of the project as a whole, with Ottawa waiting for the call for tenders process to be concluded, but it is certain that it is the City of Lac-Mégantic which will carry out the preparatory work.

These will essentially amount to the movement and protection of municipal infrastructure. A call for tenders was also launched this week by the City of Lac-Mégantic for the movement and lining of aqueducts in two areas of the industrial park. The cost of the work is estimated at around 1.7 million, said the mayor of Lac-Mégantic, Jule Morin.

Ultimately, 40% of the funding will come from Quebec, and 60% from Ottawa. Mr. Rodriguez also announced the signing of “an agreement with Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) which will make it possible to launch a call for tenders to hire the contractor who will eventually build the bypass, therefore the railway line. “.

Everything indicated for a long time that the project would go ahead, but it was not yet clear when. In June, Ottawa confirmed that certain residents of Lac-Mégantic would be expropriated to allow the construction of the railway bypass. This bypass, with a planned length of 12.5 km, aims to prevent freight trains from circulating in the city center.

Palpable opposition

In recent months, Mayor Morin has repeatedly defended the project, saying she is convinced that the scenario chosen was the most appropriate among all the routes that were studied. “We all live every day with this deep scar that has marked each of our lives. And meanwhile, every day, we continue to hear and see the train running through our city center, reopening the wound each time. This must stop,” she reiterated on Friday.

This is because opposition to the project is increasingly palpable in the region. In Frontenac, citizens rejected it by 92.5% during a referendum in February.

“If it happens here, we are talking about approximately 66 hectares of wetlands which will be completely destroyed. There are places where they will have to dig almost 100 feet below the water table. This represents 5,000 cubic meters of water per day which will be drawn directly into the Chaudière River,” the mayor of Frontenac, Gaby Gendron, recently explained to The Press.

Reached by telephone on Friday, Mr. Gendron warned that “as long as we are not reassured on the environmental level, we will not let go of the file”. The mayor of Nantes, Daniel Gendron, also reiterated that he is unfavorable to the project in its current form.

Aware of this opposition, Mayor Morin pleaded that we must “collectively ensure that the project still has as little impact as possible on humans, on the environment and for the protection and development of our territory “.

Its intention remains to establish a “monitoring program for private wells” of drinking water, which are more at risk than public wells. M^me Morin also said he requested the creation of a financial fund, which would be administered by Transport Canada, to support residents whose wells will have to be rebuilt, “so that no one ever lacks water, neither in quantity nor in quality.”

The spokesperson for the Coalition of Citizens and Organizations Committed to Rail Safety in Lac-Mégantic, Robert Bellefleur, speaks of a “necessary evil that unfortunately occurs in discord.” “It has to be done, but clearly, this file has been very poorly managed and the process, much too long, without real social acceptability,” he denounces.