Opponents crusading for new environmental assessment on Lac-Megantic bypass

Yolande Boulanger is on a crusade to stop the proposed new railway line bypassing Lac-Megantic without a new environmental assessment. (Ryan Remiorz, The Canadian Press)

In a modest house full of knick-knacks, on a farm along route 204, at the top of a hill, just outside Lac-Mégantic, Yolande Boulanger is pulling out a stack of sheets of paper.

She has collected no fewer than 250 signatures on a petition calling for the Quebec environmental consultation office (BAPE) to hold consultations on the Lac-Mégantic bypass railway project.

Conceived after the 2013 disaster that killed 47 people and flattened the town centre, the controversial project led by the federal government involves diverting the existing railway in a wide arc from east to west over a distance of 12.5 km, to prevent a similar disaster from happening again.

Estimated cost: over $1 billion, financed 60 per cent by Ottawa and 40 per cent by Quebec, for use by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPKC).

“All by myself, this little old lady, I collected 250 signatures, going for coffees at Tim Hortons, going to golden age meetings, dinners where there were lots of people,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “It's pretty good, I think!”

Environment Minister Benoit Charette has already said no to a request for a new BAPE (Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement), pointing out that consultations were already held and that the time had come to move forward.

“But that was before the petition, which will be tabled in the National Assembly shortly,” Boulanger argued. “Almost 2,000 signatures have been collected across Quebec. It's not just in Mégantic, Frontenac and Nantes that people find this project silly.

“I have relatives just about everywhere and they find it appalling that the authorities have no more conscience than that.”

Over time, the elderly woman has become one of the leading figures in the resistance to the current project.

Yet she has also been personally affected by the disaster. She lost her grandson, Frédéric Boutin, at the age of 19, who died of asphyxiation while trying to escape from his home where he was sleeping.

Boulanger may have to expropriate 35 and a half acres of her land - the train would pass close behind her home - but she insists that this is not what is causing her to act, as land was already expropriated for the passage of Route 204 and the Lac-Mégantic bypass road.

Boulanger even claims that a Transport Canada employee tried to intimidate her during the expropriation process, but she won't budge. She is now leading a crusade to defend the water table, which supplies the surrounding municipalities of Lac-Mégantic, Frontenac and Nantes.

The bypass project involves digging a major trench that will affect the water table.

“No fewer than 33,000 loads of granite would have to be transhipped,” said Boulanger. “My house is going to shake, and I don't want my cream to turn to butter in the fridge.”

During dewatering, up to 55 million litres of water will have to be discharged daily into the Chaudière River, according to federal studies.

“We're breaking the water table, how hard will it be?” she asked

Opponents argue that the current could carry away sediment and the heavy oil that has settled at the bottom of the Chaudière.

A Beauce MRC has already expressed concerns about its water supply.

Wetlands

In addition, around a hundred hectares of wetlands would be damaged by the passage of the new railway line, but estimates of the areas affected vary, a fact criticized by the mayors of Nantes and Frontenac, who are opposed to the proposed route.

“The Granit MRC's Regional Wetlands and Watercourses Program lists 110 hectares of wetlands that would be destroyed, out of the 138 hectares required for the proposed track,” said Frontenac mayor Gaby Gendron during an interview in his office, in the basement of a multi-purpose building.

According to him, the loss of these “sponges” that absorb rainfall and floods would be devastating.

Following the publication of environmental studies in 2022, Frontenac decided to oppose the current bypass project.

Although his municipality participates in a monitoring programme for 137 wells with Lac-Mégantic and Nantes, the program does not provide sufficient guarantees, according to Gendron, and Frontenac itself has called in its own hydrogeologist.

He is calling for a new BAPE, as are the Union des producteurs agricoles and several other groups.

Boulanger maintains that the route should instead connect a little further east to the right-of-way of a former Québec Central railway, which is now used as an ATV trail and would not apparently affect the water table.

In her opinion, several route options should have been studied more closely.

An “omerta”

Opponents accuse political decision-makers in Quebec City and Ottawa of not listening to them, just like their CAQ member of the National Assembly, François Jacques, and their federal representative, Conservative Luc Berthold.

“François Jacques isn't listening to us at all, he's ‘infatuated’ with the mayor of Lac-Mégantic, Julie Morin,’ said Boulanger.

“It's nothing less than an ‘oversight’ by MNAs and ministers from Quebec and Ottawa,” said Nantes Mayor Daniel Gendron in an interview. “We've written to the Minister for the Environment, Benoit Charrette, and he hasn't even replied!”

He even says that he paid out of his own pocket for a ticket to a CAQ fund-raising cocktail party in order to meet Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault, to no avail.

He also claims to have contacted Pablo Rodriguez when he was Federal Transport Minister, to no avail, and that his colleague Minister Jean-Yves Duclos had also called him to discuss his concerns, but to no avail either.

“We don't have any cooperation,” he lamented.

Finally, Gendron also tried to get in touch with the head of the CPKC, but when he made it known that he wanted to talk about the bypass, he was rebuffed.

Boulanger is banking in particular on a U-turn by Berthold, should his party come to power in the forthcoming federal elections.

Given the cost of the project, which could be as high as $1 billion, “Mr Berthold may change his mind, (his leader) Pierre Poilievre is a bit of a scrapper,” she believes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 21, 2024.