Kanesatake calling on feds to help decontaminate toxic dump site

Leaders and community members in the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) of Kanesatake are demanding help in decontaminating a dump site that could affect water quality in one of Quebec's most popular lakes.

Mohawk Council of Kanestake Grand Chief Victor Bonspille said he is in contact with Canada and his community's environmental protection office to find a solution to toxic water leaking off a now-closed recycling operation in the community west of Montreal.

"A solution to the G&R (Recycling) site will be imminent," said Bonspille.

One of the owners of the operation said a water treatment plant will ready for testing soon to clean up the runoff. He added that the situation is not as dire as recent reports suggest.

"I have done water testing to see how contaminated the water is and we are at the very low end of the spectrum," said co-owner Robert Gabriel.

"Everybody expects things of this nature to be fixed overnight," he added. "That just doesn’t happen. With all the testing, building plans with engineers, it takes time."

Gabriel said the water issue is being addressed first, then the clean-up of the site.

The Quebec Environment Ministry told CTV News the estimated that the cost of decontaminating the dump is tens of millions of dollars.

RECYCLING CENTRE HISTORY

Brothers Robert and Gary Gabriel began operating G&R Recycling in late 2011 on Ahsennenhson (Centre) Road in the middle of a residential area in Kanesatake. Former grand chief and current council chief Serge Otsi Simon said community members quickly began complaining about the traffic, and his council worked to close the site down.

"We saw well over a year, hundreds and hundreds of trucks dumping we don't know what, within that little residential area," said Simon, who was grand chief at the time. "They're coming from various construction sites around Montreal, Laval, you name it."

Simon said he spoke to the recycling company's owners about stopping the trucks after attempts failed to get outside help from surrounding municipalities or the provincial and federal governments to step in.

"We were totally dependent on outside governments to help us stop it," he said. 

Simon said athey eventually reached a compromise, and the owners moved the operations to a site outside of the residential area to the site on Saint Jean rural road.

Quebec authorized the operation in 2015 for a dry material construction recycling centre. Simon said the operators began by following the conditions, but "it generated into what you see now."

BLACK WATER AND CONTAMINANTS

Quebec's environment ministry revoked its authorization and ordered the site to stop operating in 2020. Quebec says "it still does not operate its site in accordance with the Environment Quality Act and the authorization issued by the Ministry."

Quebec's inspections found that the volume of waste - 117,497 m3 - went way beyond the limit of 27,000 m3. In addition, tailing piles were too high, water courses were constructed on the site without authorization and water from the site had high concentrations of ammonia, nitrogen, and sulphides.

"There is also a resurgence of black water with an intense odour that flows into the environment," the Quebec document reads. This leached water has been sampled, and the results show that it exceeds several standards and criteria."

The ministry said notices of non-compliance were issued for violations after inspections found the site was not operating within the provincial environmental laws, and G & R Recycling was fined a total of $17,883.

In the neighbouring municipality of Oka, Mayor Pascal Quevillon said the environmental impacts will be felt beyond Kanesatake's border. He is calling on Canada's Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller to step in to avert an "environmental disaster" where contaminated water winds up in the Lake of Two Mountains.

"It is time to act now Mr. Minister the issue is under your jurisdiction," Quevillon wrote on Facebook.

Gabriel said G&R Recycling is not the only recycling centre dealing with issues and that Quevillon and Simon are making the problem out to be worse than it is.

"For him (Simon), it's about spreading fear and never about facts," he said.

NO ENFORCEMENT CAPABILITIES

Simon said that part of the problem involves the community's environmental department's lack of enforcement capabilities.

The office has, he said, flagged other sites, including scrapyards, that require cleanup.

"It's not just G&R. There are several sites in Kanesatake," said Simon. "Old scrap yards and people bringing in truckloads of landfill that was untested."

A CTV News story in January detailed Kanesatake's failed attempts to get the federal or provincial governments to improve security on the territory.

Simon said the issue of unauthorized dumping in Kanesatake did not start with G&R Recycling.

"This is an ongoing issue; it's not from 2011. It goes back to a long time," he said, adding that he wishes he had done more when the operation first started in 2011.

"It's really disheartening," he said. "I think my biggest failure was not fighting hard enough. The situation caught up to us so quickly. We had no idea what they were doing until it was too late.

"I've hunted, fished and gathered on this territory and around that mountain since I was a little boy, and to see what was done there goes completely against my environmental protection beliefs."

CTV News Montreal has reached out to the federal environment ministry for comment, but it has so far not responded.

With reporting from CTV News journalist Amy Luft.