Dear community members,
We would like to once again apologize for last week’s odour event. These were the result of a late start of our facility, combined with several days of exceptionally high weather and high volumes of organic matter. All of these factors, both internal and external, had a significant impact on the community.
The challenges of processing organic matter quickly
As an essential industry and an integral part of Quebec’s food chain, rendering presents major challenges, especially during the summer and heat waves, especially given the volume of organic matter that we receive.
The odours smelled last week stemmed from an unusually high volume of trucks parked in the yard of our facility, remaining stationary for longer periods of time than normal during the long heat wave.
Ultimately, the best way to successfully manage our odour footprint is to ensure the robustness of our facility to speed up our operations so that in the long run, we can leave as few trailers as possible waiting in the yard. This is what we have been implementing since last summer.
Our modernization plan is thus producing results, despite last week’s exceptional event. In fact, despite the heat waves in May and early June, our operation was under control and normal.
Follow-up on the start of our operations this week
The start of our operations this Monday went well. Our teams are working hard to ensure that operations run smoothly to avoid a similar scenario on July 1st.
Once again, we encourage citizens to report odour episodes directly to us; thanks to our software and artificial intelligence, we are able to provide quicker action to correct the situation, when possible.
We also highlight that the Citizens Committee of RDP-PAT and Sanimax will meet for the first time next week. This Committee, made up of three citizen-members and representatives from the government and Sanimax, is a new vehicle through which you will be able to communicate your concerns. The list of elected citizens is available on our Web page.
We are committed to being transparent and proactive with our community. We therefore encourage you to visit our Web page (rdp-pat.sanimax.com), to join our Facebook group (@Sanimax Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles (RDP-PAT)) and to subscribe to our monthly newsletters to get the most up-to-date information on our operations.
