Stablex: Blainville and Montreal metropolitan community to appeal to court about landfill expansion
Posted March 17, 2025 1:48 pm.
Last Updated March 17, 2025 1:49 pm.
The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) and the city of Blainville intend to go to court to challenge Bill 93, which would allow Stablex to expand its landfill site.
In a press release, the CMM and the city of Blainville wrote that they had “informed the Attorney General of Quebec on Monday of their intention to file an application with the Superior Court to stay the application of the Act in order to contest its legality and constitutionality.”
The American company Stablex plans to create a sixth landfill cell on land belonging to the town of Blainville.
Even though its project was rejected by the Bureau d’Audiences Publiques sur l’Environnement (BAPE) in the autumn of 2023, the Legault government tabled Bill 93 last February to expropriate the city at a cost of $17 million in order to sell the land in question to Stablex, which handles hazardous materials from the United States.
The land sought by Stablex includes nine hectares of wetlands and 58 hectares of woodland. According to the BAPE, it is a natural environment of exceptional quality that is home to plants, amphibians, and reptiles of special status.
“This sector of the Blainville peat bog is of regional and metropolitan ecological importance and forms part of the largest complex of non-riparian wetlands in Greater Montreal (over 600 hectares). Several species of flora and fauna of precarious status have been identified there, including nearly 200 species of birds,” according to the CMM.
The CMM is also asking the government “to comply with Interim Control Bylaw (ICB) 2022-96, which prohibits the destruction of natural environments subject to it.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
