WATCH: It’s going to be a noisy summer for some West End residents as Montreal’s airport kicks off its four-month-long construction project. Gloria Henriquez reports.
MONTREAL — It’s going to be a tough summer for West End residents.
The Montreal airport is set to undergo a four-month-long construction involving their de-icing centre and Eastern apron.
This means more take-offs and landings than usual throughout the summer, and, therefore, increased noise levels are expected.
Some of the affected areas are Pointe-Claire, Dorval, Ville Saint-Laurent, Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc Extension.
The construction has revived a longtime battle against airplane noise pollution and has some residents like Ahuntsic’s Michel Dion on edge.
Dion has been dealing with high noise levels for some time.
“We were watching TV during the evening… we’d have to pause and wait until the plane passed,” he said.
“Sometimes they’d be passing every two or three minutes.”
What bothers him the most is the fact their noise complaints to Montreal Airport seem to be falling on deaf ears.
“I would like them to acknowledge there’s a problem… let’s start with that,” Dion told Global News.
About 80 Ahuntsic-Cartierville residents met with the Montreal airport authority last week to share their concern over high noise levels the upcoming construction might cause.
But residents left the meeting frustrated, saying they feel like more needs to be done about previous issues before tackling any other projects.
A spokesperson for Les Pollués de Montréal-Trudeau, a group fighting high noise levels in the city, said he agrees.
“What about the existing noise?”
“Then you can talk to us about the noise that’s going to come because of construction,” said Alan Khazan, a spokesperson for the group.
“Because frankly, that doesn’t make any difference to us. There’s so much noise anyway, we’re not going even notice that.”
Neighbourhoods have also been pushing for noise pollution issues to be resolved by putting resolutions forward.
Christine Beaulieu, a spokesperson for the Montreal airport authority said the agency is working on these issues.
“We are tackling the measures as much as we can to reduce the level of noise,” said Beaulieu on a phone interview.
“But the access to the runway will remain as it was in 1941.”
But Dion said he wants to see big changes happen.
His solution “is called Mirabel,” he said.
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