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Montreal’s 2019-2021 capital spending program appears to confirm the city will have what a whistleblower warned this summer would be the “most expensive composting plants in this universe.”

The latest municipal capital works program, unveiled by Mayor Valérie Plante on Thursday, shows the combined price of the decade-old project to design, build and maintain five organic waste treatment centres on the island has ballooned to $589 million.

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The latest figure is up by 70 per cent over last year’s estimate of $344 million, though no shovel has yet gone into the ground. The project is also now more than double the initial price tag of $237.5 million that was announced in 2013.

The five centres are also delayed again. The last target date for most of the centres to start operating was 2020. Now, they’ll open between 2021 and 2025.

The cost increase is the result of high bids on contracts to design, build, operate and maintain the first three of the five centres, the city executive committee member responsible for the project, Jean-François Parenteau, said on Thursday.