Organic waste centres delayed as price balloons to $589M

Montreal’s 2019-2021 capital spending program appears to confirm the city will have what a whistleblower warned this summer would be the “most expensive composting plants in this universe.” The latest municipal capital works program, unveiled by Mayor Valérie Plante on Thursday, shows the combined price of the decade-old project to design, build and maintain five organic waste treatment centres on the island has ballooned to $589 million. The latest figure is up by 70 per cent over last year’s estimate of $344 million, though no shovel has yet gone into the ground. The project is also now more than double the initial price tag of $237.5 million that was announced in 2013. The last target date for most of the centres to start operating was 2020. Now, they’ll open between 2021 and 2025. The increase is the result of high bids on contracts to design, build, operate and maintain the first three of the five centres, the city executive committee member responsible for the project, Jean-François Parenteau, said. The city received a single bid in two of the calls for tenders, and two bids in the third. La compagnie de recyclage de papiers MD and SUEZ Canada Waste Services were each the sole bidder on, respectively, a composting plant in Rivière-des-Prairies — Pointe-aux-Trembles borough and a biomethanation plant in the suburb of Montreal-East. The two firms were the only competitors for a composting centre in St-Laurent borough. The city had launched the calls for tenders under Plante’s predecessor, Denis Coderre, in 2017, but the bid openings were postponed because the city said companies requested more time. Sources told the Montreal Gazette this summer that the bids on the three contracts had come in at least 50 per cent above the city’s estimates, leaving the city in a quandary. “They’re probably the most expensive composting plants in this universe,” one source said in the summer. The Plante administration refused until now to say whether it would award the contracts or cancel the tenders. Parenteau said on Thursday the executive committee will cancel the call for tenders for the R.D.P.-Pointe-aux-Trembles plant in the coming weeks. But it will award the two contracts for the St-Laurent and Montreal-East plants despite the high prices. “We were waiting to make a final decision,” Parenteau said, because of the high bid prices. However, bids have come in at double the estimates for similar projects in other cities, such as Beauharnois, in the meantime, he said. “Now we know it’s the market,” Parenteau said. “Maybe our initial evaluation was too low. There aren’t a lot of bidders.” The administration supports the idea of building organic waste treatment centres on the island rather than trucking waste off-island for treatment, Parenteau said. Forty-seven per cent of waste on the island is compostable, “so it was important to start somewhere.” The key changes between the new 2019-2021 capital works program and the 2018-2020 program: St-Laurent composting plant: cost goes from $65.3 million in previous program to $131.9 million in new program. Delayed from December 2020 to August 2021. Montreal-East biomethanation plant: goes from $72.8 million to $126.4 million in new program. Delayed from December 2020 to August 2021. R.D.P. — Pointe-aux-Trembles composting plant: goes from $46.9 million in previous program to $90.7 million in new program. Delayed from December 2020 to June 2024. LaSalle biomethanation plant: goes from $89.1 million in previous program to $143 million in new program. Delayed from June 2024 to June 2025. Montreal-East pre-treatment plant: goes from $22.2 million to $31.1 million in new program. Delayed from December 2021 to September 2024.