The “cell n” redevelopment projecto 6″ from the Stablex industrial waste treatment center in Blainville, northwest of Montreal, is “premature” and should be rejected, recommends the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE) in its report released Friday .
Stablex wishes to obtain authorization from Quebec to develop a new landfill cell for residual hazardous materials, contaminated soils and “non-hazardous materials with properties of concern for the environment” on land that it plans to purchase from the City of Blainville, with the aim of reaching the landfill capacity authorized by the government in 1981.
However, the project would not make it possible to achieve the objectives invoked by the company, would bind the government for a period of approximately 40 years and would pose a threat to peripheral natural environments, some of which have “exceptional ecological value”, concludes. the BAPE following public hearings on the subject.
The pumping necessary to install waterproof walls around the cell could cause a variation in the water level of wetlands located on the outskirts, of which the Blainville peat bog is a part, and thus “potentially modify their ecological integrity”, underlines notably the report.
The land targeted for the development of the cell is also part of an ecological corridor making it possible to connect two vast complexes of wetlands “that carrying out the project would fragment it”, adds the document.
“The commission also concludes that it would be imperative for the ministry responsible for the Environment to carry out an inventory on the management of residual hazardous materials and non-hazardous materials of concern,” states the BAPE report, which invites Quebec to adopt a action plan for the reduction and management of these materials.
The BAPE “listened to the science and recognizes the almost unanimous opposition to the project,” welcomed the Eau Secours organization in a press release, on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups, calling on the Minister of the Environment, the Fight against climate change, Wildlife and Parks Benoit Charette to reject the project “right now”.
Minister Charette will take “the time to analyze the BAPE report and its conclusions” and to carry out “the environmental analysis of the project as a whole” before ruling on its fate, declared his press secretary Mélina Jalbert, without move forward on a date.
The fate of the project appears uncertain in any case since the City of Blainville terminated, at the end of the summer, the agreement concluded with Stablex for the sale of the land on which the company plans to develop its new cell. landfill, a decision that the company contests.