Finance committee examining rising cost of composting plants

Montreal must investigate why the projected cost of five organic waste treatment plants to be built in the next seven years has soared, opposition councillor and St-Laurent Mayor Alan DeSousa said Tuesday. Budgeted at $237.5 million five years ago, the five plants will now cost $589 million, the Montreal Gazette reported last week. “It’s a quantum leap,” DeSousa said at a session of the city’s finance and administration committee, which is studying the 2019 budget and capital works program for 2019-21. The future plants include two composting centres in St-Laurent and Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointeaux-Trembles, two biomethanation plants in Montreal-East and LaSalle, and a pre-treatment plant in Montreal-East. Beaconsfield Mayor Georges Bourelle also questioned the costs. “To me, it’s unacceptable for a project to go from $237 million to $600 million. Should we review our projects and see how we can make them more affordable?” Last week, Jean-François Parenteau, executive committee member responsible for the environment, said the skyrocketing costs were the result of high bids on contracts for the first three of the centres. Only one company bid on two of the projects and only two on the third. On Tuesday, DeSousa said it’s more expensive to build waste treatment centres in a large city like Montreal because of the high cost of land and the need for high environmental standards. The reason Montreal opted to build them on the island is that the principle of territorial equity requires every community to deal with its own waste, he said. “So in a sense, I know one of the reasons (for the high cost), but at the same time, I’m stunned at the increase because it started out at $235 million and now it’s $520 million,” said DeSousa (who calculated the total differently). DeSousa also noted that the city is now planning to delay some of the construction by up to four years, which he predicted will further drive up costs. “That will compromise our commitments on sustainable development and it will compromise our ability to achieve results on reducing waste,” he said. Parenteau said the city is also reviewing the projects.