Horne Smelter: A buffer zone will be created, some 200 households will be relocated | Arsenic Rouyn-Noranda

Quebec will announce on Thursday that the buyout of the houses will be at Glencore's expense.

Houses in the Notre-Dame district are located a few meters from the site of the Horne Foundry.

Big upheavals are preparing in Rouyn-Noranda. The Glencore company will buy around 80 buildings located near the Horne Foundry, in the north of the Notre-Dame district, in order to create a buffer zone around the factory, which is blamed for its fumes. arsenic and other pollutants.

The information, first broadcast by the daily La Presse, was confirmed Wednesday morning by Radio-Canada.

Some 200 families will be relocated, their residences demolished, which will allow the greening of the land. The Legault government will make the announcement on Thursday, itself extending no less than $85 million, in particular to allow the development of a new neighborhood and support the economic diversification of the municipality.

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Quebec will take the opportunity to present the Foundry's next objectives in terms of polluting emissions.

In particular, it will be required that the plant reach an emissions ceiling of arsenic by 15 nanograms (ng) per cubic meter (m3) within five years. But the company will also have to have a long-term plan to reach the provincial standard of 3 ng/m3.

Minister Benoit Charette is responsible for this thorny file.

The Minister of the Environment and the Fight against climate change, Benoit Charette, will travel to Rouyn-Noranda for the occasion. It is he who will unveil the government's action plan. He will also present the new ministerial authorisation, which has already been sent to Glencore, to the press.

The households targeted by this major redevelopment plan live in 191 dwellings, themselves divided into 90 units, 80 of which are residential.

The relocation of the buildings closest to the Foundry Horne had been considered for some time. The figure was mentioned last summer in a Radio-Canada report.

It has also been agreed since January that the relocation of residents from the north of the Notre-Dame district would be included in the new ministerial authorization for the plant, which will be presented on Thursday.

The houses that will be demolished had agglutinated at the Horne Foundry over time, the neighborhood having been built gradually around industry.

As for the limit of 15 ng/m3 of arsenic in the air, Quebec will go ahead despite the fact that the majority of residents of Rouyn-Noranda consider it too high.

< p class="e-p">Even if public health considered that this threshold was acceptable while waiting for the achievement of the target of 3 ng/m3, 57% of the population opposes it, revealed the results of a consultation public held last year. In the Notre-Dame district, the rejection of such a target reaches 70%.

However, the company Glencore and the Government of Quebec agree that the achievement of the 3 ng/m3 standard remains out of reach in the short term.

Until now, the Horne Foundry had the right to emit a maximum of 100 ng/m³ of arsenic into the air, or 33 times the Quebec standard. We will know on Thursday whether a transitional threshold will be imposed on it pending the achievement of the target of 15 ng/m3 within five years.

Québec solidaire (QS) , which lost the riding of Rouyn-Noranda–Témiscamingue to François Legault's CAQ in the last election, points out that the local population was never consulted about this planned move.

The party now demands that she be. And that, if at the end of these consultations, the solution of a move appears inevitable and that it achieves consensus among the citizens, the Horne Foundry assumes the entire bill.

QS parliamentary leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois expressed his surprise and annoyance to the National Assembly press gallery on Wednesday morning.

Instead of bringing the multinational to heel, the CAQ will ask 200 families to pack their boxes, he lamented. And in addition we will put public money into the operation, as if Glencore International did not have the means to respect Quebec's environmental obligations.

This is an unacceptable decision, and it demonstrates the real priorities of the CAQ in this file, launched the deputy.

With the information of & #x27;Alexandre Duval and Thomas Gerbet