Montreal will pay $17 million to Ray-Mont Logistiques, which has decided to set up a major industrial container transhipment project on the edge of a residential neighbourhood. The city also announced on Thursday the protection of Steinberg Woods, one of the few green spaces in this sector of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
Faced with a lawsuit from Ray-Mont Logistiques (RML), which was claiming $373 million due to delays in obtaining authorization for the project located north of Notre-Dame Street in the city’s east end, Montreal has finally managed to reach an agreement with the company in exchange for $17 million in compensation.
The city also announced Thursday that it will protect the entire Steinberg woodland, a plot of land measuring nearly 40,000 m2 located north of the RML site and whose preservation citizens have been demanding for several years. A street extension project previously threatened to encroach on this green space.
This wooded area will eventually be connected to another located nearby, thanks to the protection of a “wasteland” where there are currently railway tracks. The objective, explained the City in a press release, is to “create a buffer zone between industrial activities and the surrounding residential areas, particularly Viauville.”
“According to this new development planned for the sector, only multifunctional trails and cycle paths will be able to cross the woods in order to guarantee its accessibility to a diversity of users,” it was specified.
“The uncertain future of the Steinberg woods has been a concern for the population for many years. It is therefore with relief and pride that we are putting an end to the road extension project in the woods, which began several decades ago now,” said the mayor of the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, Pierre Lessard-Blais, on Thursday.
In addition to the preservation of the Steinberg woods, the City “is committed to continuing the evaluation of scenarios within the framework of the Assomption-Souligny project”.
A scenario already mentioned provides for the creation of a new road section starting from rue Notre-Dame and running along the eastern portion of the RML land, then joining avenue Souligny.
This option could also channel trucking out of the Port of Montreal, as the City anticipates an increase in this industrial traffic in the area. In addition to these new road infrastructures, the City could review Dickson Street between Hochelaga and Notre-Dame streets.
Project nuisances
A City of Montreal document designated as “confidential” and obtained earlier this year by The Duty had also noted the potential nuisances linked to the RML project. “The arrival of RML in the sector will induce rail traffic never seen in the sector since the years of Canadian Steel Foundries”, a company that occupied the same site until 2004, we can read there.
“This activity will inevitably cause nuisances to the surrounding area,” the document underlines, mentioning the passage of 100 wagons per day, which will cause “multiple nuisances [bruit, poussières, pollution lumineuse]”.
The Legault government authorized a first phase in 2022, which allows the storage of 5,000 containers on the site as well as the transit of 1,500 trucks each day.
Despite repeated requests from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve residents, the Legault government has repeatedly refused to conduct an environmental assessment of all the impacts of this industrial project. Such a review could have been conducted by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) if Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette had demanded it.