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I have a dream. That the Mont-Royal was taller. Let's make it that way. Let's dump some tonnes (several) of dirt and rocks on top of it. Let's prevent the inevitable building plateau.

'Iconic' park will rise from former St-Michel dump Kevin Mio, Montreal Gazette More from Kevin Mio, Montreal Gazette Published on: August 28, 2015 | Last Updated: August 28, 2015 3:32 PM EDT What was once a quarry and garbage dump that has marred the city’s St-Michel district for decades will soon become one of Montreal’s — if not the world’s — most iconic parks, Mayor Denis Coderre said on Friday. The St-Michel Environmental Complex will be transformed into the city’s second-largest park, behind Mount Royal, beginning with several new sections that are to be opened to the public for the first time in 2017, in time for the city’s 375th birthday. The whole project is slated to be completed by 2023, Coderre said. “New York has its Central Park, Paris has its Luxembourg Gardens, London has its Hyde Park. If it is true that the major cities of the world can be recognized by their legendary green spaces, Montreal has certainly not been left out,” the mayor said as he made the announcement standing in front of what will become a 12.5 hectare wooded area and lookout in a few years. “We already have Mount Royal Park, our largest park, and in a few years we will soon have another equally iconic (park) right here,” he said. “This transformation represents one of the most ambitious environmental rehabilitation projects ever undertaken in an urban environment in North America,” Coderre said. “We are building a park out of a site that contains 40 million tonnes of garbage.” The cost of this phase of the project is $33.7 million, which the city is paying for from its capital works budget. The final price tag for the remainder of the work is not known. However, Coderre said whatever money is needed will be made available to complete the project. Once finished, the park will include thousands of trees, a lake, wooded areas, pathways, rest spots, an outdoor theatre and more. Anie Samson, the mayor of the Villeray — Saint-Michel — Park Extension borough and member of the executive committee, said the transformation shows that the impossible is possible. “Today is a big day for us and it is one more step forward toward the realization of our dreams (for St-Michel),” she said. “For the past 20 or 30 years, (residents) had a dump over there. Now it is going to be one of the biggest and nicest parks in the world,” Samson said. By 2017, just over 17 hectares of park space will be open to the public. In all, the park will occupy 153 hectares of the 192-hectare site. “A lot of people are talking about sustainable development, but what does it mean? I think we have a living proof here,” Coderre said. “We are providing today a new definition of how to revitalize an area. Frankly, at the end of the day … a lot of people are inspired by other cities. Trust me, this one will be an inspiration for the rest of the world.” Journalists were given a bus tour of the site Friday morning, which included a drive into the lowest point of the former quarry, which will eventually become the lake. It will be five times as big as Beaver Lake on Mount Royal. The lake will be filled with run-off water from the park and will be treated to make it safe to be used for boating and kayaking, but not for swimming. The second major project is a new entrance way to the park along Papineau Ave. that will include, among other things, a sliding area for winter activities, public spaces and areas where people can rest or play outdoor games such as Frisbee or flying kites. Two other sections already opened to the public will be reconfigured and new entrances constructed. There is already a pathway that rings the entire complex, but this is the first time the public will be allowed onto the landfill site. But how they will get to the park, near the corner of Papineau Ave. and Jarry St., is another question since public transit to the area is far from ideal. Coderre said they are working on a plan to address that issue. “We can have the nicest park, but it has to be accessible,” Coderre said. “We want Montrealers to be able to take advantage of the park so there will be an action plan for public transit, a mobility plan.” One challenge city officials face is how to camouflage the more than 500 wells that dot the site. They serve as monitoring stations for the biogas which is emitted by the buried garbage and the city must find a way to hide them while still allowing them to be accessible to workers for repairs. At the same time, they must prevent vandalism. The biogas is recovered and used as fuel on site by Gazmont, producing enough electricity for 2,000 homes. The company signed a new deal this year to recuperate the gas for 25 years once renovations are completed in 2016. The electricity is sold to Hydro-Québec, with the city getting 11.4 per cent of total sales per year. kmio@montrealgazette.com http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/iconic-park-will-rise-from-former-st-michel-dump

Ce n'est peut-être pas la meilleure source sur le recyclage montréalais, mais bon, je suis tombé sur cet article qui décrivait la situation à travers le pays... Recycling rates vary greatly across nation Municipalities that make it easy for people to dispose of garbage have higher diversion rate Jul 16, 2007 04:30 AM Kristine Owram Canadian Press Statistics Canada says Canadians are recycling and composting more than ever before, but whether they compost their coffee grounds or recycle their milk cartons seems to have a lot to do with where they live. While cities like Montreal and Calgary struggle to divert even a third of their waste from landfills, others expect to be recycling or re-using up to 90 per cent of their solid waste within a few years. In Markham council has been working for years to find ways to divert as much waste as possible from landfills. Through a combination of public education and pilot projects, they've managed to reduce the amount of waste headed to the dump to just 30 per cent. Regional councillor Jack Heath, chairman of Markham's waste diversion committee, said the solution was simple: picking up recyclable and organic waste – blue boxes and green bins – twice as often as garbage. "If you want to throw your banana peels and your dirty diapers in the garbage, you can hang onto them for two weeks," Heath said. "Or, you can throw them in the green bin and we'll collect them every week." Heath said all it took to reach 70 per cent diversion – a rate Toronto, which currently sits at about 42 per cent, has set as a "long-term goal" – was a little political will. "People had some trepidation, but after a few weeks they said, `This isn't that difficult,'" he said. "It was the strong will of council to solve the problem that basically changed the system, and that's how we got to where we are." Statistics Canada's Households and the Environment Survey, released Friday, found the proportion of household waste recycled by Canadians increased from 19 per cent in 2000 to 27 per cent in 2004. The survey also found that 27 per cent of Canadian households composted in 2006, up from 23 per cent in 1994. In Edmonton, councillors brought the public on board by making it easy for them to recycle, said Garry Spotowski, a spokesperson for the city's waste management division. Edmonton has been a trailblazer in the field of waste diversion since 1988, when the city became one of the first in North America to introduce a blue-box recycling program. Many cities, including Ottawa and Vancouver, ask residents to separate paper from metals, plastics and glass. Most cities ask residents to throw organic waste in green bins, separate from the rest of their garbage. Edmonton residents, however, need only put recyclables in blue bags and the rest into garbage bags; the city takes care of all the sorting, Spotowski said. "Instead of going to a landfill, it goes to the Edmonton composting facility, where it's sorted and any material that doesn't compost is screened out," he said. "It's actually very simple. We emphasize convenience as much as possible." The city currently diverts about 60 per cent of its waste from the dump, but that figure is expected to reach 90 per cent within a few years once a new "gasification" facility opens to convert residual waste into gas for heating, transportation and producing electricity, said Spotowski. Larger cities like Toronto, however, are struggling to catch up. In 2002, Toronto's Keele Valley landfill site was closed and the city began shipping its garbage to Michigan for disposal. At that point, the city had a waste diversion rate of only about 25 per cent, said Geoff Rathbone, Toronto's director of solid waste programming. Since then, the city has introduced a green bin program, which it will extend to apartment buildings and other multi-family homes by next year. It also plans to introduce a new pay-as-you-toss system for garbage. All this will contribute to the city's 10-year plan to increase diversion to 70 per cent, Rathbone said. Halifax is close behind Edmonton with a diversion rate of 55 per cent. Although they ask residents to separate organics from recyclable containers from newspapers from garbage, they take a similar approach to ensure nothing gets left behind. "You know you'll never have 100 per cent compliance, meaning that hidden inside that black garbage bag, you'll still have some items that shouldn't be there," said Jim Bauld, manager of solid waste resources for the Halifax Regional Municipality. "So every bag is opened." http://www.thestar.com/News/article/236301