Budget 2020

$7 million plus for the Aylmer Ecocentre

Gatineau’s 2020 Budget will include an envelope of more than $7 million for the Ecocentre project in the western sector of the city.

Proposed by Lucerne District Councillor Gilles Chagnon as part of his electoral platform in 2017, the project is now in the preparatory phase.

The city will evaluate a set of lands in the Aylmer and Plateau sectors before issuing a call for tenders for its construction.

This new centre represents a major step forward for Gatineau, which last month conceded that the Aylmer, Buckingham and Masson-Angers areas were very underserved.

Currently, nearly 100% of the population in these areas are more than 15 km from the nearest ecocentre and many of them are reportedly more than 20 km away. 

The city also estimates that only 40% of potentially recoverable waste is currently sent to Gatineau’s ecocentres, creating a shortfall of 15,000 tonnes of waste per year that is recovered during special bulky waste collections or taken over by private companies 

The provisional deadline for the project is 2025, with the possibility of advancing this date by a few years if the process proceeds without major complications.