C.D.N.-N.D.G. seeking site to dump snow, borough mayor says
With Angrignon grounds at limit, CP lot in Côte-St-Luc could get a second look
With much of the snow already cleared, the city’s most-populous borough was beginning to focus on how it will improve its snowremoval operation for the next major storm.
Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Damede-Grâce trucks were barred this week from using one of the borough’s three snow dumps, which it shares with LaSalle.
The dump, located on Angrignon Boulevard near the Angrignon shopping mall, was apparently near its limit for snow. As a result, the city decreed it would only accept trucks from LaSalle, forcing C.D.N.—N.D.G. trucks to drive farther away to the St-Michel environmental complex, and they often get caught in traffic.
“Every minute that a truck is in transit is a minute that it can’t pick up snow,” Snowdon city councillor Marvin Rotrand said.
On Thursday afternoon, Marilyne Laroche Corbeil, a spokeswoman for the central city, said the borough was once again permitted to dump snow at the Angrignon site. However, she said the situation changes day by day, so trucks could be barred again on Friday or after future snowstorms.
She said half of the borough’s snow already cleared after the latest storm was sent to the Angrignon dump.
As of Thursday afternoon, the borough had cleared 70 per cent of its streets, but was still the laggard of the 18 boroughs reporting on the city’s snow-removal website. The citywide average was 88 per cent.
On Thursday, borough mayor Sue Montgomery said they are trying to find another place to deposit snow if the Angrignon dump is once again off limits.
However, Rotrand said the borough had an option to build a fourth snow dump on the borough’s outskirts about four years ago, but it was nixed by then-mayor Denis Coderre.
“In the early 2000s, we used a site at the end of Royalmount Ave., but it was too small,” Rotrand said.
The borough stopped using the site because the run-off from the snow was contaminating an adjacent plot of land owned by CP Rail, according to Montgomery, a former journalist at the Montreal Gazette.
Rotrand contended, however, that the Gérald Tremblayadministration came up with ade alto buy the adjacent lot from CP. The agreement had to be negotiated with the railway and the city of Côte St-Luc, where the lot is located.
“The railway was OK with it and Côte-St-Luc did not object, but Coderre decided not to buy the land,” Rotrand said. “We have to look into this again. Provided CP still wants to sell the land, and provided that Côte-St-Luc is also game, it could be a good solution.”
Montgomery said she would not comment about the plan by the previous administration.
Rotrand blames a centralization of city services for many of the borough’s woes. Because all decisions have to go through the city’s large bureaucracy, Rotrand said, there is little ability to make quick decisions that could improve the operation.
“While I am relatively confident central will come up with something, they are slow,” Rotrand said. “We have a problem right now. We need a solution right now, not in three weeks.”
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district city councillor Peter McQueen also blamed the centralized system of snow clearing, and warned things could get worse before they get better.
“Snow clearing is also a service that Coderre had started centralizing, so the borough will no longer launch its own contracts,” McQueen wrote in a Facebook post. “All will go through centre city with uniform service requirements. This might be OK if service was levelled upwards and we started getting cleared as fast as the fastest current boroughs, but … I have my doubts.”
Some additional measures could be in place for the next snowstorm, Montgomery said, including asking the private contractors doing snow removal in three-quarters of the borough to add day shifts to their workload. Snow is usually only cleared at night.