BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

Faced with mounting and unrelenting opposition, the MRC of Vaudreuil-Soulanges last month made an abrupt turn-around, scrapping plans to build a multi-million-dollar compost treatment facility in St. Télesphore.

The move was immediately applauded by residents who vehemently opposed the choice of location for the open-air plant. It does not, however, mark the end of the MRC’s plan to build a compost treatment facility in the region. It simply halts plans to purchase the proposed seven-hectare wooded site in St. Télesphore.

In announcing the decision to not buy the land on Nov. 22, MRC officials cited a preliminary environmental assessment it received just hours before the decision was announced. That assessment claimed the chosen location for the facility presented certain environmental risks, a claim the residents who opposed the plan have been highlighting since the project was made public in September.

“The land does not meet the requirements for such a project, since it is considered a site of high vulnerability,” MRC prefet Patrick Boussez said while making the announcement.

The assessment was made by an environmental expert, Boussez said at the public meeting, but MRC officials refused to provide any other details of the report. When pressed  last week, one MRC official said the oral assessment provided before the meeting was confidential due to “legal reasons.” The official would not say what firm provided the opinion and that no written report was available.

Boussez was unavailable for comment. In a statement, however, he said: “We have a responsibility as a community to prioritize the sound management of our residual materials while respecting the major environmental challenges we face. This project is essential for us and future generations.”

St. Lazare Mayor Geneviève Lachance, one of three mayors on the 23-member MRC council who voted against the initial resolution in support of the regional authority’s bid to purchase the proposed site in St. Télesphore, said she did not have any more information about the environmental assessment that halted the plan.

Earlier in November, despite the pleas from residents concerned about the risk posed by an open-air facility contaminating the underground water network in the area, Boussez was adamant for the need to push the project forward, citing a Dec. 16 deadline to finalize the purchase of the site to avoid losing a provincial grant to help finance the project.

That changed on Nov. 22.

As the MRC council voted to halt the purchase of the site, Boussez asked the residents who opposed the project to throw their support behind the project and the effort to find a new site for the composting facility.

Stephanie Côté, a spokesperson for the residents, made it clear, the group is not against the construction of a facility, merely opposed the proposed location in St. Télesphore.

In addition to the risk of underground water contamination, residents opposed the open-air plan for the site in St. Télesphore because the plan called for the installation of a massive concrete platform over a vast territory in an location that serves as a natural recharge area for the water table, the destruction of a rich natural environment, the rezoning of agricultural land, the cutting of much of seven hectares of forest, and would create truck traffic in the westernmost area of the region to process waste generated mostly by the larger populated areas in the east end of the MRC, including the municipalities of Île Perrot, Vaudreuil-Dorion and St. Lazare.