Despite years of pushing for solutions, a terrible stench remains for RDP residents

Residents in Montreal's RDP neighbourhood have fought to have something done about the rank odour from a nearby meat rendering plant.

Residents living in a section of Montreal’s Rivière-des-Prairies (RDP) neighbourhood say when the smell drifts in, it’s unmistakable.

“It’s a smell that sticks to you. It’s atrocious,” RDP resident Theo Vecera said. “It’s a nauseating smell that, really, you can’t even breathe it.”

For more than a decade, they’ve dealt with a stench from the Sanimax facility, a meat rendering company in Rivière-des-Prairies.

The plant is just metres away from hundreds of homes. The City of Montreal and Sanimax are in mediation to figure out how to contain the awful smell.

It’s been a long and tough battle for citizens like Vecera, but in 2024, he and others received a letter from the city. It explained that an agreement had been reached in court and that solutions would ensure environmental norms would be respected.

More than two years later, however, Vecera says the smell remains.

“It’s been consistent. The smell has become stronger,” Vecera said. “I am sorry to say that the smell has become stronger.”

“As a citizen, we’re stuck in between, and nothing’s getting done, and we’re suffering out of all this because Sanimax continues to operate,” Roberto Molinaro, another RDP resident, said.

The city and Sanimax appear to be at odds over the odour unit standard. Sanimax says several improvements have been made and that it’s committed to investing $50 million to modernize its facility.

“Two independent engineering firms have confirmed that the city’s one odour unit standard is technically impossible for a rendering facility like Sanimax to achieve, even with the best available technology,” Sanimax said in a statement to CTV News.

The executive committee member responsible for the environment, Gabrielle Rousseau-Belanger, acknowledges residents have been dealing with this for a long time.

“Our priority remains clear: to achieve tangible and sustainable results that will truly improve citizens’ quality of life,” Rousseau-Belanger said in a statement.

Residents say the problem has dragged on for years.

“We want what everybody else has, which is not complicated, that we come home from work, we can have a nice barbecue outside, the children can play outside without the fear that a smell can just come in and ruin the day,” Vecera said.