Limoilou residents to be compensated for cleanup after 2012 'red dust incident'

A Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled that thousands of Quebec City residents who found their homes and cars covered in red, metallic dust one autumn day in 2012 will be compensated for their cleanup costs.

More than 14,000 households in the city's Limoilou neighbourhood will be reimbursed for the costs of removing the residue that caked their balconies, windowsills and stairways on Oct. 26, 2012.

An error at Arrimage Quebec — a cargo-loading company operating at the Port of Quebec — led to the release of the red dust, which then settled on everything in the neighbourhood.

Veronique Lalande and her partner, Louis Duchesne launched a class-action lawsuit against Arrimage after finding the dust on her baby son Leo's face.

Lalande called the ruling a victory for the community and the environment.

"It's been more than six years of fighting — of sacrificing our spare time and energy to this," she said.

Lalande said after launching her suit in early 2013 that it cost about $2,000 to clean her home. 

Only a fraction of that will be covered: people living in the 5,073 homes in the so-called "red zone" will receive $200 per household, and each of the 9.268 households in the 9,268 "blue zone," where the dust was not so thick, will receive $100.

Justice Pierre Ouellet ruled the "red dust incident" was an isolated event, which occurred on a single day and caused no health impairment. He said the main harm was the time it took to clean up.

Compensation offered at the time

Lalande said it was important to her that all claimants be equally compensated.

The complainants asked for $300 for red-zone homes and $150 for blue-zone homes. Ouellet reduced the amount of compensation, as well as the size of the zones in question.

In a statement, the Quebec Port Authority said it is satisfied with the judgment and said mitigation efforts have been put in place to avoid another such incident.

The company at fault, Arrimage, said in a statement it will take time to analyze the court's decision before making further comments.

Arrimage offered homeowners compensation after the incident in 2012, it said, and has since put in place measures to prevent such an incident from recurring.

Lalande confirmed that she was offered $600, in the form of a white envelope placed in her mailbox, in 2012, but she said the company made no apology. She said she turned down that payment because it would not have been fair to her neighbours who were offered less money or none at all.

"It felt like such an injustice," Lalande said.

She said even though she got less than she'd hoped for, she will deposit the cheque with pride that everyone affected by the dust incident got the same payment.

Dust contains heavy metals

Lalande ordered tests of the substance after the incident, and the results showed traces of iron, zinc, copper, arsenic and nickel in the dust.

"It [was] a red cloud of iron-oxide dust that does contain certain amounts of other heavy metals," said Renée Levaque, the Public Health Ministry's regional co-ordinator of environmental health, in an interview with CBC's Quebec AM in November 2012.

Levaque said while some people with respiratory conditions may have been affected by the dust, there was no danger of irreversible health effects from exposure to the dust.

Lalande said although the dust in her neighbourhood is no longer red, the Limoilou neighbourhood is still exposed to a lot of air pollution.

"We still live in that dust every day," she said.

She said she plans to pursue further legal action to fight the problem.