An activist went on Thursday morning in Blainville to block entry to the site of the STABLEX dangerous waste treatment company, as a protest against its expansion project on the ground of a peat bog. He was finally arrested in the early afternoon.
The man, who defines himself as anarchist and anti -capitalist, perched at the top of a wooden structure several meters high around 6:30 am this morning, chained to the fence of the fence at the entrance of the Stablex installations.
Contacted by Radio-Canada, he said he was not representing any environmental organizations and that he lived in Rouyn-Noranda.
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According to the press release transmitted by the demonstrator of the demonstrator, Samuel Touchette would have perched on a wooden structure in front of the doors of Stablex at 6:30 a.m. this morning.
Photo: Félix Archambault (media representative)
According to his spokesperson Jonathan Tremblay, the Blainville police were first alerted around 6:20 am from the presence of six demonstrators in front of the company’s doors. Since Stablex asked for the expulsion of the demonstrators, the municipal police called on a specialized squad of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) to dislodge the chained demonstrator.
According to his media representative, the man then pointed out to the police that he was no longer able to leave the premises because of his channels.
Around 2:30 p.m., the Sûreté du Québec intervention squad had managed to detach it. He was arrested immediately afterwards. He was questioned by the investigators and then released. The activist could, however, face charges of mischief and obstacle to the work of the police, according to the spokesman for the Blainville police.
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Aerial view of the number 5 burial cell, still open. Stablex has buried dangerous industrial waste in Blainville since 1983. (Archives photo)
-Photo : Google Earth
For his part, the spokesperson for Stablex Canada, Maxime Couture, said that Stablex recognizes the right to demonstrate, but this must be done without infringing the health and safety of the workers present
.
Many manifestations against Stablex
The Stablex company, which deals with dangerous inorganic waste from Quebec and the United States which it buys in its site to eliminate them, has recently been the subject of several citizen events in opposition to the project to enlarge its landfill #6 on a peat bog.
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More than a hundred demonstrators had gathered on April 5 before the landfill of STABLEX industrial waste to demonstrate against PL91 and the project to enlarge cell 6.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Louis-Philippe Trozzo
In its report on the study of the project to enlarge cell 6 in 2023, the Office of Public Harrants on the Environment (BAPE) qualified the boute de blainville in the field High ecological value
.
At the end of March, the Government of Quebec adopted Bill 93 under gap, which aimed to expropriate the city of Blainville to force the transfer of the land to Stablex.
Quebec argued the urgency to act in the face of the risk of a crisis in hazardous waste management in the province, a hypothesis which had however been rejected by the analysis of the BAPEa few years earlier. The company also claims that its cell 5, currently exploited, reaches its saturation point.
In response, the city of Blainville and the Metropolitan Community of Montreal (CMM) filed an injunction against Stablex in the superior court in early April, but their request was rejected.
The court of appeal had subsequently rejected their dispute in mid-April, giving free rein to the expansion project of the dump.
