While Ray-Mont Logistiques is relaunching the construction of its industrial project on the edge of a residential area in eastern Montreal, the Legault government still does not know whether it will be subject to an environmental assessment. The developer, who has not yet requested all the necessary authorizations, is facing opposition from elected officials, merchants and citizens of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
Ray-Mont Logistiques relaunched construction work on its container transshipment project this week, stressing that this was mandatory to comply with the regulations of the City of Montreal, which granted it the necessary authorizations.
The company therefore intends to continue work on the site located near the Port of Montreal, north of rue Notre-Dame and east of rue Viau. It is there that it intends to build an intermodal platform (which would make it possible to move containers from trucks to railcars) which would be in operation every day, 24 hours a day. The platform would also include the stacking of a maximum of 10,000 containers on site, with a view to exporting them by ship, and a thousand truck passages every day.
Has the work to come received all the necessary authorizations? Ray-Mont Logistiques claims that they “comply with applicable regulations and legislation. They have obtained the permits required by the competent authorities”.
In the office of the Minister of the Environment of Quebec, Benoit Charette, the answer was less clear on Friday. “Our ministry is currently in discussions with the company in order to better understand the details of the work it wishes to begin and the authorizations that would be required to move forward. »
It is specified that for the moment, the operations would be limited to the “storage of containers” on the site, which would not require additional authorization. “An audit of activities on the site will take place in the coming days to take stock of the work started. No means will be discarded to ensure compliance with environmental laws and regulations,” adds the minister’s office.
Environmental assessment
Does the Minister intend to submit this industrial project, one of the most important in recent years in Montreal, to an environmental assessment? Mr. Charette’s office is content to repeat that the Ministry of the Environment has still not received a new authorization request for the intermodal transhipment platform project. “Since no application has been filed, it is not possible for the moment to establish which environmental authorizations would be necessary for its realization. »
The promoter has already obtained government authorizations for several essential steps in the realization of this project. Ray-Mont Logistiques was therefore able to carry out asphalting work on the site, where residents of the sector and elected officials wanted to establish a “nature park” which would be linked to a wooded area further north. The company can also, without an environmental assessment, build the railways necessary for the project and use contaminated soil to build a “screen wall” located on the side of the residential sector, which is approximately 100 meters from the future industrial site.
However, the Ministry of the Environment confirmed to the Homework that Ray-Mont Logistiques has not yet requested or obtained the necessary authorization to build the “intermodal platform”. However, the construction of this platform could be subject to “prior authorization” under the Environment Quality Act (EQA).
Minister Benoit Charette could therefore, at that time, subject the project to the environmental assessment procedure provided for in the legislation. To do so, the Minister must determine that the environmental issues that the project may raise are major and that the public concerns justify it.
According to a lawyer already consulted anonymously by The dutythe dispute raised in the sector of the Ray-Mont Logistiques project could justify the initiation of such a procedure, especially since the project could have repercussions on the air quality of the sector and on noise pollution.
Project denounced
Friday morning, elected officials, merchants and citizens of the sector also urged the Legault government to act in this file. “This is not the kind of development we want in our neighborhood,” argued the federal deputy for Hochelaga, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, underlining the Trudeau government’s opposition to the Ray-Mont Logistiques project.
“The Quebec government is isolated. All that’s missing is the Government of Quebec at the table,” added the supportive MP for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Alexandre Leduc, deploring “the nuisance” that the project would impose on the neighborhood.
For the president of the Quebec Association of Environmental Physicians, Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, Ray-Mont Logistiques is an incoherent project in the context of the fight against the impacts of the climate crisis. She thus recalled that the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the need to put in place measures to adapt to the impacts of global warming.
“In a neighborhood like Hochelaga, in a city like Montreal, no decision should be made without considering these elements,” she insisted. This adaptation involves the “greening” of large cities, while the industrial project will, on the contrary, create “an imposing heat island”. What’s more, the opposition of the citizens of the neighborhood is likely to cause “psychosocial impacts”, if the project goes ahead. “I see no justification for this project to see the light of day. »
In addition to the industrial container storage and transport project, the area of the Ray-Mont Logistiques site could be the transit point for the future eastern REM. The City of Montreal also plans to invest $108 million in a road project that will notably facilitate trucking for the Port of Montreal. The route of this new road must pass to the east of the site.