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Cantley residents are celebrating a court decision to keep a dump blasted for lax environmental standards and releasing toxic gas permanently closed.
Last week, the Quebec Superior Court upheld a 2007 ruling to close it, giving owners Denzil Thom and Gilles Proulx until April 9 to appeal the decision or admit defeat.
“It’s great news for us,” said Cantley Mayor Steve Harris. “To me the rapidity of the decision here — barely 30 days — suggests it wasn’t a difficult decision to make.”
“We will decide if we want to appeal the decision,” said André Guibord, spokesman for the dump owners, who are still studying the decision. “My clients always said they would fight this right to the end.”
The Superior Court’s decision was the latest legal blow to Thom and Proulx. Judge Carl Lachance’s 25-page decision upheld two previous rulings by the Quebec administrative tribunal that cited “repeated and persistent violation of environmental quality laws” that damaged the “health, security and well-being” of nearby residents.
The tribunal appeals came after then-environment minister Claude Béchard ordered the dump closed on Sept. 20, 2006, and revoked its certificate of authorization. The owners appealed, but the tribunal upheld the decision and the dump was shut down for good on Oct. 17, 2007.
The dump was only licensed to accept construction waste, but it apparently accepted dead animals, aerosol cans, tires and other questionable items.
Guy Legault is reassured by the decision. He lives just 400 metres from the dump and can see it from his sunroom. He returned to Cantley in 1999 in good health to take over his parents’ house after his mother’s death.
By 2003, he began to tire easily and had trouble breathing.
In 2004, he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. In December of that year, an underground fire had been smouldering, spewing toxic plumes of hydrogen sulphide gas, but it wasn’t until March 2005 that firefighters were called. It took 10 days to extinguish the blaze.
About 200 people left their homes from March 15 to 19. Because they left voluntarily, they weren’t eligible for compensation.
Environment ministry employees found concentrations of 300 parts per million (ppm) of hydrogen sulphide gas in parts of the dump. Lung irritation begins at 20 ppm. Levels of 300 ppm can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea or loss of consciousness.
Guibord maintains the hydrogen sulphide presence is little more than a “nuisance.”
“It doesn’t cause health problems,” he said, pointing to a private study his clients commissioned from the University of Laval. “There has been a lot of exaggeration.”
Since its closing in 2007, one hectare of the dump has been sealed off with a plastic membrane. Guibord says a membrane to cover the remaining 1.6 hectares has been on site for about a year, but his clients cannot install it without their certificate of authorization. “It’s a chicken and egg thing.”
For Legault, it can’t come soon enough.
“Must we wait for another inquiry to put an end to our health problems?”
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