A proposed industrial project, which would be a tremendous boost to its tax base, will only take shape once Senneville spends up to $200,000 to resolve environmental/legal wrangles that led to the delay of construction for more than two years.
During a recent budget presentation, Senneville officials noted that $120,000 is being allotted to urban planning and a further $25,000 for legal fees associated with the town having to acquire additional land from the adjacent Mount Royal Cemetery property to deal with the Tenaquip project.
Work on the site, part of the former Domtar property located on the Highway 40 service road, started in fall 2011 but was halted after Quebec’s Ministry of the Environment filed a notice of violation. The ministry decided the construction of the new Tenaquip distribution and office facility, a potential $20-million investment, was being conducted in an environmentally sensitive area.
“We have to buy land from the cemetery so we could move that wetland over. The government said if you’re destroying one wetland you have to replace it with another one,” councillor Charles Mickie told The Gazette. However, Mickie considers the wetland in question as nothing more than a ditch. He noted the matter had been brought to the ministry’s attention by some citizens who had filed a complaint. When the previous council had approved the plans so the project could commence in 2011, he said the town and the developer had both determined there was no wetland.
The land the city is buying from the cemetery will be swapped over to allow the Tenaquip development to restart. Final negotiations to resolve the matter are still taking place, Mickie noted. He added the bill to resolve the matter could end up costing the town up to $200,000.
For Senneville, the new Tenaquip facility would be a huge financial gain as the only industrial-sized business currently located in the town of 920 residents is Charles River Laboratories.
The three-year delay in the Tenaquip project has meant the town has lost potential tax revenue in the range of $200,000 per year, Mickie noted.
Mickie, who heads the town’s financial committee, said the $145,000 set aside in the budget to resolve the Tenaquip project was a factor in the average nine per cent tax hike facing homeowners this year. If not for this extra cost, homeowners would have an average tax increase of about 2.5 per cent.
While acknowledging the land-swap deal is being done to accommodate the needs of Tenaquip, Mayor Jane Guest declined to comment further at this time, adding she hopes to be more forthcoming with information once she knows more about the status of the project.
Officials from Tenaquip, currently based out of an existing facility in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, could not be reach for comment.
The approximately 15-acre lot to be developed for Tenaquip is owned by the town, which, consequently, it obtained from Mount Royal Cemetery as part of an unrelated out-of-court settlement a few years ago regarding a zoning dispute.
Meanwhile, plans for the Belvedere Cemetery and Funeral Complex in Senneville are underway, and its opening is anticipated sometime this summer, according to the webpage of Mount Royal Cemetery, its parent company.
