Extremely rare initiative: the Quebec Ministry of the Environment has hired the security firm GardaWorld to monitor agricultural land contaminated by the illegal burial of residues and is demanding nearly $5.5 million from its owner for cleaning up the land located in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, learned The duty.
The ministry confirmed to Duty having awarded a contract to the Quebec multinational to monitor agricultural land located in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac. Businessman Jean-Charles Legault allowed residue to be buried on this land for years.
At the entrance to the site, cameras have also been installed to monitor what is happening there. “ [Elles] will allow the police department to expel any person not having the right to circulate on the site,” indicates ministry spokesperson Frédéric Fournier by email.
The latter also confirms that Quebec is demanding nearly $5.5 million from the owner of the site. A notice of claim to this effect was sent on April 23. The amount claimed represents the costs paid by the Ministry of the Environment to characterize the land and remove residual materials that were on the site, in 2021 and 2022. The bill should increase with the continuation of the rehabilitation work, which is not not finished.
This agricultural land is at the heart of the authorities’ examination of several environmental breaches, including a discharge of residual materials that contaminated the soil. A situation which “could be at the origin of the concentration of ethylbenzene [un solvant et un composant de l’essence] measured in surface water,” according to a 2021 contamination advisory.
The repeated failures led the ministry to bring out the heavy artillery last October by obtaining a “civil confiscation” of the site before judgment, a first in Quebec. “This is a measure that has never been taken by the Ministry, justified by the seriousness of the case,” explains Frédéric Fournier.
However, the claim for $5.5 million was transmitted to the current owner of the site, a numbered company which Jean-Charles Legault sold in 2022. The latter transferred it to a resident of Guatemala — a man named Marcos Lopez Mendez — then presented as a Canadian living in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The address was rather that of a hotel in the Days Inn chain where the new owner never resided, as revealed this fall The duty.
Does this mean that the Ministry of the Environment will not be able to obtain the amount requested? “No recourse is excluded in this case,” responds the ministry, recalling that in Quebec, company representatives – such as managers or administrators – can be held responsible for the environmental offenses of their organization.
The representative of a company who commits an environmental offense “is presumed to have committed this offense himself,” indicates the ministry, citing an article of law.
The duty tried several times to contact Jean-Charles Legault, without success.
The CPTAQ does not rule out a prosecution
The Commission for the Protection of the Agricultural Territory of Quebec (CPTAQ) is also monitoring the situation closely. The guardian of arable land has taken steps to invalidate the transaction: in Quebec, the transfer of agricultural land to a “non-resident” must receive the green light from the CPTAQ.
The transfer of the company to a resident of Guatemala “could have been orchestrated by Mr. Jean-Charles Legault in order to avoid the consequences of a possible judgment rendered against his company,” we read in the CPTAQ order. . This hypothesis, she notes, “would have the merit of explaining the prevarications on possible places of residence of Mr. Mendez, in Quebec or in Ontario, or that Mr. Legault would have used the addresses for the sole purpose of completing the change of ownership forms”.
The CPTAQ indicated to the Duty not having filed a formal lawsuit against the company and Jean-Charles Legault, specifying that they were “waiting for the outcome of the legal process” to formalize the seizure of the land. “This does not affect the validity of the Commission’s order, which could be subject to legal recourse,” concludes the CPTAQ.
The mayor of Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Benoit Proulx, welcomes the monitoring of the site. “It’s good news, but I look forward to seeing how many more times the security and fire services will have to travel there because of the activities taking place there. » He recalls that the situation “has been problematic” for years, particularly for citizens who live close to the land. “It had to stop, the landfilling, because the biggest risk is that the water table would be affected. »
Residences and other farmland nearby do not have access to a water system and rely on groundwater. “People here are very nervous [à la pensée] drinking water is affected. This has worried us for a long time,” he said. He also wishes to emphasize that, since the arrival of the current Quebec Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, the file has moved forward. “Everything he said he was going to do, he did. »