Light pollution | “It was day at night! »

Light pollution from greenhouses denounced

Ariane Kroll
The Press

Frustrated and worried about the nocturnal light emitted by the Serres Toundra in Saint-Félicien, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, citizens are calling for a law against light pollution.

The yellow skies photographed in the middle of the night by residents of the Saint-Félicien area seem to have been taken from a fantastic film. But for many people, this new reality is a blight.

Caroline Lavoie, who lives in Saint-Prosper, just next to Saint-Félicien, has lost a large part of the starry sky that she loved to observe while walking in the evening. “Since last winter, we can’t do it anymore, the northern side of the sky is completely hidden by the luminous halo,” she denounces. Last November, the magnitude of the halo emanating from the complex where Les Serres Toundra grows their cucumbers doubled, she estimates. “It was day at night! »

She filed a complaint with the City of Saint-Félicien, the regional county municipality (MRC) and the Ministry of the Environment, to no avail.

“There are indeed no regulatory requirements aimed at limiting light pollution”, confirmed the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Quebec.

M^me Lavoie therefore created a Facebook group at the beginning of the year to demand “the end of the luminous halo of Serres Toundra”. A petition on the site of the National Assembly, asking “that the government of Quebec legislate on light pollution”, was added last Monday.

“When you look at a map of light pollution in Quebec, the greenhouses are like incredibly strong points,” says Rémi Boucher, who has been documenting light pollution problems for several years. It was particularly striking over the Tundra Talons on the night of January 31 to the 1^er last February. According to the observation made by the VIIRS instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite (NOAA-NASA), the radiance there was then almost 100 times stronger than above Montreal.

“We had a problem in the greenhouse, we had a breakage,” replies the CEO of Serres Toundra, Éric Dubé. The problem came from the new phase 3 greenhouse, whose black screens supposed to filter more than 99% of the light did not work. The greenhouse finally went into production last Thursday, and the next ones will also be equipped with black screens, assures Mr. Dubé.

An additional cost of “several hundred thousand dollars” per greenhouse, which Toundra assumes even without regulatory obligation, he argues.

The greenhouses of the earlier phases will however continue to diffuse their nocturnal glow in the countryside of Saint-Félicien. Phase 2 white screens will be replaced with black ones only when they reach end of life, in “about five years”. “But phase 1, it will be impossible”, because its lighting system, less powerful, would not be enough for the cucumbers, warns Mr. Dubé.

MRC in reinforcement

In the absence of a provincial framework, the three RCMs where the Mont-Mégantic International Dark Sky Reserve extends, in Estrie, have adopted their own regulations against light pollution. In the MRC du Granit, new greenhouses equipped with interior lighting must install blackout curtains on almost all of their surfaces (98% of the roof and 95% of the walls).

The acquired right granted to the greenhouses established before the regulation is extinguished as soon as they intervene on their lighting; they then have the obligation to comply with the new regulations.

M^me Lavoie is asking the MRCs in his region to adopt similar regulations. “In my ideal world, Les Serres Toundra would be forced to put signs on phases 1 and 2, and not in five years: now! »

Biological risks

Olivier Hernandez, astrophysicist and director of the Montreal Planetarium, is sorry for “the human being who loses his right to enjoy the beauty of the starry sky”. Light pollution, “is also pollution, just like noise or atmospheric pollution, and it has consequences for humans and biodiversity”, he underlines. He calls on governments to “regulate quickly”.

Light pollution has effects on wildlife (eg bird migration) and on humans, in whom disruptions to the circadian cycle are believed to increase the risk of hormonal cancers, Hernandez says.

“The effects of night light on wildlife have been the subject of numerous scientific articles and the effects have been demonstrated, just like in humans”, for its part underlined the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks in its responses to the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) during the review of the LNG Saguenay project.

Les Serres Toundra has benefited from significant financial support from Quebec, including $55 million in loans and guarantees from Investissement Quebec. The company is owned by a group of regional investors (51%) and Resolute Forest Products (49%).