Every Thursday evening in Blainville, north of Montreal, residents gather in front of the Stablex toxic waste landfill site to keep an eye on it. Each time, a large number of police officers and private security guards hired by the company accompany the protesters. Often, there are twice as many of them as there are members of the public.
For more than two years, Blainville residents have been fighting against the American multinational Stablex, which has been operating in the city for over 40 years.
Stablex is working hand in hand with the Quebec government and the mayor of Blainville to ensure its expansion, to the detriment of the health of 60,000 residents of this suburb on the north shore of Greater Montreal. This is what the Blainville Citizens’ Coalition Against Stablex Cell #6 is denouncing.
“We are here to show that we will not give up,” Marie-Claude Archambault, spokesperson for the citizens’ group, told The North Star.
“We want to show them that everything is now out in the open, everything is known. We’ve been shining a spotlight on the plant for at least two or three years. They were quiet before! They were burying waste without anyone knowing what was going on there. We are increasingly publicizing and informing people.”
And their “surveillance” quickly proved useful.
“If we hadn’t been there…”
On the evening of August 21, 2025, during one of the citizen watches, a truck leaving the Stablex site was stopped by activists who wanted to ask a few questions.
During the questioning, the truck was on a downward slope. Suddenly, an unknown liquid began to leak from the truck and gradually slide toward the storm drains leading to Lockhead Creek. A total of 1,300 litres of liquid spilled onto the industrial boulevard. Marie-Claude and other citizens were on the scene:
“It started to smell awful. We stopped everything and called 9-1-1. The firefighters came. They cordoned off the area, backed up the truck, and called environmental emergency services.” Meanwhile, the citizen group took the opportunity to take a sample.
“First, the company sent its guys to clean up as much as possible,” another citizen, Claude, told The North Star. The environmental emergency response was slow in coming: “They didn’t have any staff left, or they were cut off, or they were stifled by politics. In any case, they never showed up. ”
That evening, only the fire department responded to the emergency. Without the equipment or training to assess the presence of contaminants, they only did a strip test, which revealed a neutral pH.
The sample, which fortunately had been taken by citizens, was analyzed by Bureau Véritas and evaluated by ecotoxicologist Daniel Green. The results were just as alarming as the latest tests undertaken by activists: 42 times the environmental standards for lead, 38 times the standard for mercury, 8.7 times the standard for manganese, and 4 times the standards for cadmium.
“That’s what the lookout is for. If we hadn’t been there, the truck would have left unnoticed. It would have pissed all over the highway,” adds Archambault.
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