BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

In what one protester is describing as the “most significant citizen opposition” in close to a decade, the members of the Vaudreuil-Soulanges MRC council are being urged by a growing chorus of residents to reconsider their choice of location for a $20-million compost treatment centre, the largest project ever tackled by the regional authority.

But, according to MRC prefect Patrick Bousez, the plan to acquire the seven-hectare site in St. Télésphore is moving ahead. In fact, Bousez says the deal to purchase the site, that is currently zoned for agricultural use, has to be completed by Dec. 16 or the offer to purchase will be voided. If that happens, the MRC will forfeit a $6.4-million grant pledged by the provincial government to subsidize the cost of the project, he said.

“If we are not owners of the site,” the subsidy will be lost, Bousez explained in an interview with The 1019 Report, adding, the funds “will permit us to conduct the studies needed.”

These studies, including hydrological assessments, will determine the project’s impact on everything from the area’s flora and fauna to the risk to underground water sources, he said. They will also help determine whether the provincial Environment Ministry gives the project the needed final go-ahead.

It’s that risk to underground water sources that is at the top of the list of reasons residents in the area are opposed to the project.

But it is not just residents who are opposed to the site for the open-air composting treatment facility. Three municipal councils in the region have adopted formal resolutions in the last month urging the MRC to reconsider its choice of locations for the plant.

The councils in St. Polycarpe, Ste. Justine de Newton and Coteau du Lac have formally requested the MRC to consider an industrial site for the facility.

But Bousez said putting the plant in an industrial zone would mean scrapping the plan for an open-air treatment plant in favour of a closed facility, a move that could triple the price of the project to about $60 million.

Bousez said the MRC, like all MRCs in the province, have an obligation to treat composable waste. It could, he explained, opt to contract this responsibility to a private firm. But doing that, he argues, would mean it would not be able to control costs or guarantee the quality of the compost produced, a product, he says, will help maintain and enhance the biodiversity of soils in the region.

He, however, acknowledges the concerns being expressed by residents in the immediate area – who, for the second time in two months, have packed the council chamber for the monthly MRC public meetings, including the session on Oct. 25. He reiterated that the MRC is at the beginning of the planning process. And he pledged that all standards to protect the environment will be adhered to.

But those promises were not enough for residents who voiced their concerns during last month’s public MRC meeting.

“What would happen if there is contamination?” asked St. Polycarpe resident Maxime Bissonnette, referring to the underground water source that traces its route through the area of the planned site. “Zero risk does not exist,” he said, explaining his home – like all in the area – draw their water from underground wells.

“So you have the impression this project is accepted by the population?” asked St. Télésphore resident Stephanie Côté.

Another resident at the meeting asked the MRC prefect point-blank: Will you reconsider the choice of the site?

Bousez responded: “Not at the moment.”

“How can you go forward with citizen opposition?” asked Marie-Louise Séguin, another St. Télésphore resident.

In an interview last week, Séguin outlined the list of citizens’ concerns. In addition to the risk to underground water contamination, she pointed to the fact the open-air facility calls 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 creating truck traffic in the westernmost area of the region to process waste generated mostly by the larger populated areas, including the municipalities of Île Perrot, Vaudreuil-Dorion and St. Lazare, which are in the east end of the region.

“We need this (facility),” Séguin said, “but we need to find an appropriate and safe site for it.”