Construction Nexus, an excavation company often sanctioned for its environmental failings, has been unloading soil from construction sites in the Montreal region on the banks of the Ottawa River in Kanesatake for months. While the Mohawk Band Council is putting Nexus on notice to stop dumping this debris there, Mohawk leaders who fear water contamination have been violently attacked, we learned. The Press.
June 5, 2024. Trucks from the Laval company Nexus converge on the small municipality of Oka. In almost an hour, The Press lists around ten trucks which, from Highway 640, take Chemin d’Oka and Rang Sainte-Philomène along the Ottawa River.
Once in the Mohawk territory of Kanesatake, these vehicles enter recently deforested land. It is there, at the end of the site, near the watercourse, that they dump the soil loaded earlier in a construction site in the Montreal region.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Once in Kanesatake Mohawk territory, vehicles enter recently deforested land and dump soils loaded earlier.
A truck we followed was loading soil from a road site in Beaconsfield. Following a similar approach, the English media The Rover claimed on Saturday that soil from construction sites in Laval and along Highway 440 was being dumped in Mohawk territory.
Images that The Press captured with a drone show a 10-wheel truck which, in Kanesatake, unloads 20 m3 stone and earth from his skip. Next to it, a mechanical excavator and a bulldozer compact the piles that accumulate here and there. An hour earlier, this same bulldozer was working the surface of a neighboring land where the embankment has made the beach which was there until recently disappear.
Ce va-et-vient quotidien des camions de Nexus dérange et inquiète des membres de la communauté. Le 14 mai dernier, le Conseil de bande a d’ailleurs fait parvenir une mise en demeure à l’entreprise – et à son président, Romeo Sacchetti – pour forcer l’arrêt des travaux. « Si vous croyez, ou si on vous a avisé, qu’il s’agit d’une région de non-droit, vous vous trompez », lit-on dans le document que La Presse a obtenu.
Le Conseil y rappelle « que les lois fédérales environnementales s’appliquent, tout comme les lois provinciales en matière d’environnement ». Si Nexus ne cesse pas « immédiatement tout déversement sur le territoire mohawk de Kanesatake », des poursuites seront entamées, déclare le Conseil de bande.
« Malgré les tentatives des membres du Conseil pour bloquer l’accès de ces camions au territoire mohawk, les chauffeurs de votre entreprise ont continué à arriver et à considérer Kanesatake comme un site de déversement non réglementé », est-il écrit.
Ce que cette mise en demeure ne décrit toutefois pas, c’est la division que suscitent ces activités dans la communauté. Une situation explosive qui a mené, en mai dernier, à une violente altercation entre le propriétaire d’un des sites et deux chefs du Conseil, Serge Otsi Simon et Brent Etienne.
Dans une vidéo visionnée par La Presse, on voit les chefs questionner un camionneur de Nexus. Quelques minutes plus tard, le propriétaire du site arrive et la situation dégénère. Une bagarre éclate. Ce dernier assène un coup de poing à l’un des chefs alors qu’un employé projette au sol l’autre membre du Conseil de bande.
Le chef Brent Etienne, impliqué dans l’altercation, déplore ce qui se déroule à Kanesatake : « C’est vraiment regrettable que des gens qui n’ont pas à cœur notre communauté modifient complètement le territoire qui a fait vivre les habitants de Kanesatake depuis 6000 ans. Aussi loin qu’on se rappelle, le lac [des Deux Montagnes] provided fish for our people and the land gave us the crops and wood needed to build our homes. »
A similar story from Chief Serge Otsi Simon: “To fill in as they do, near the lake, they must have the green light from the Band Council and there must also be an environmental study. But all this was not done. They ignored our environment department. »
“I have already told Minister Ian Lafrenière: these are companies that have permits from your government, so it is your responsibility to stop these trucks and sanction them,” he said, indicating that the negligence of governments is one of the reasons why companies dump debris in Mohawk territory. He adds in the same breath: “I’ve said it a thousand times that we don’t have the resources to stop this. We don’t have a police force; we don’t have barracks and we don’t have officers to monitor the environment. »
Pascal Quévillon, mayor of Oka, is well aware of the situation. Trucks have been passing through the downtown area of his municipality to go to Kanesatake for years. “But the comings and goings have been more intense since February or March of this year,” he notes. He challenged the deputies from his constituency, but also the Minister of the Environment of Quebec, Benoit Charette, and that of Relations with First Nations and Inuit, Ian Lafrenière.
The mayor says he fears contamination of the municipality’s drinking water.
The Ministry of the Environment itself has difficulty collecting samples from the territory [pour évaluer l’impact environnemental] because they can be threatened.
Pascal Quévillon, mayor of Oka
The company’s president, Romeo Sacchetti, declined our interview requests. When contacted by The Pressthe company had not acknowledged receipt of the formal notice that the Band Council sent last month.
It was the National public relations firm that finally sent comments by email on behalf of Nexus last Friday. It is written that in the last few hours the company contacted the Band Council to ask it to “provide additional information in order to better understand the factual basis of the elements alleged therein”.
Nexus affirms that it “has not at any time dumped soil into the Ottawa River” and ensures “to maintain a buffer strip between the natural environments and the deposit site”. Its “commitment to environmental protection remains unwavering,” she says, reiterating that she is only responsible for transporting the soil and not the fill.
Accustomed to sanctions
Construction Nexus – which displays its LEED certification on its website – is no stranger to environmental infractions. Since 2020, the Ministry of the Environment has sent it six administrative monetary sanctions, the equivalent of fines for environmental violations. Three concern the unauthorized processing of construction residual materials in Laval.
The sanctions of recent months are linked to the dumping of soil, in wetlands, on agricultural land that Nexus purchased in Mirabel in December 2022. Inspections by the Ministry made it possible to detect the presence of hydrocarbons in what was dumped .
The Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Land of Quebec has also opened an investigation into this subject and the municipality, for its part, forced the closure of the site last September.
In Kanesatake, Nexus does business with the company Excavation X, responsible for the embankment. Its owner, Dany Duchaine, has been involved in several cases of inadequate land disposal. In 2020, the Ministry of the Environment took action against another of its companies – which calls itself Nycel Dépôt or Remblai Expert – for having dumped contaminated soil on agricultural land in Saint-Eustache.
More recently, he took part in non-compliant backfilling on agricultural land in Mirabel belonging to the treasurer of the Laurentides division of the Union of Agricultural Producers, as reported last fall The duty.
Dany Duchaine refused to grant an interview to The Press. “Go see the landowners I work for. I am hired by them. “It’s not me who delivers,” he replied when asked about his activities in Mohawk territory.