Saying it wanted to act in a “logical” way, Northvolt proposed to the Quebec Ministry of the Environment to use an illegal method to fill in wetlands on its site, namely the use of contaminated soil, we have learned. The duty. The company also raised the idea of emptying wetlands in order to destroy them, before being called to order by government experts.
This information is included in a 129-page document of email exchanges between Northvolt and representatives of the Ministry of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks (MELCCFP). The duty obtained this document two months after requesting it under the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies.
Several pages are redacted, but we can read an exchange between the “environment manager” of Northvolt and an analyst from the MELCCFP about the filling of wetlands on the site of the future factory. This exchange took place on January 25 and 26, 2024, a little more than two weeks after the government authorized the Swedish multinational to destroy nearly 140,000 m2 wetlands on this site of “high ecological value”.
As the company was then preparing a first phase of “backfilling”, of 60,000 m2 wetlands, the manager requests a meeting. “We want to ensure that we proceed according to the rules of the art,” she wrote, before emphasizing the wish to address the question of the soils to be used for backfilling, since the ministry required the use of soils considered to be suitable for this use.
She then recalls that “the land is contaminated”, that “an industrial installation will be built on the filled wetlands” and that 65,000 m3 (more than 100,000 tonnes) of soil will be required. “This would represent more than 400 truck movements per day for more than two weeks,” she adds. Please note: when announcing the start of the backfilling on February 13, Northvolt indicated in a press release that “carrying out this work will require the movement of around a hundred trucks per day”.
In her email of January 25 addressed to the ministry, the Northvolt representative insisted in the same breath on “the nuisances” that trucking “could cause for neighbors as well as the environmental impacts”.
An illegal suggestion
The company’s “environmental manager” therefore proposes the use of soil from Northvolt land, even though it is contaminated. “We will have excess soils excavated during the work and these soils will have to be transported off-site. Consequently, it seems more logical to us to carry out the backfilling with soils already present on the site”, writes the Swedish multinational, which was presented by the Minister of the Environment Benoit Charette as “a very good student in one respect from an environmental point of view.
However, such a way of doing things contravenes Quebec law, replied an analyst from the MELCCFP the next day. “It is prohibited to deposit contaminated soil in wetlands,” she writes. “No one may deposit contaminated soil or allow it to be deposited in wet or watery environments,” indicates the Regulation on the protection and rehabilitation of land.
The analyst also refers to an email sent in December 2023 in which the ministry already indicated to Northvolt that it is prohibited to use contaminated soil for the destruction of wetlands necessary for the construction of the industrial complex. In another long email from the ministry, dated October 23, 2023 and detailing various issues, including the “management” of contaminated soils, it is also emphasized that the use of these is “prohibited” in accordance with the Law on the Quality of the environment.
In a written response sent Wednesday, Northvolt affirms that the backfilling was ultimately done in accordance with the ministry’s directives. “We backfilled the wetlands with granular material from the Mont Saint-Hilaire quarry (which we plan to reuse as much as possible on the site when we begin the excavation work),” it was indicated. “We have not started the soil excavation work,” the company said.
Northvolt had already indicated to Duty, last February, that the phase of work which involves backfilling and deforestation did not include excavation of potentially contaminated soil. The site contains tens of thousands of tons of contaminated soil resulting from the land’s heavy industrial past. The latter is located along the Richelieu River and upstream of three drinking water intakes.
Empty wet environments
Three days before her proposal on the use of contaminated soil, the “environment manager” of Northvolt had also contacted the MELCCFP, this time for a “request for clarification” regarding the authorization for the destruction of wetlands.
“The activity of filling wetlands must be carried out between 1er August and 1er March, either outside the amphibian reproduction period, or when wetlands are frozen or dried up,” the ministry underlined in its authorization granted on January 8. The passage is also cited by the manager in her email dated January 22.
“Should we understand that the filling of wetlands can be done when these environments are dried out by a natural process or can it also be a matter of human intervention? » she then asks.
“Wetlands must be dried by a natural process. Dry the media by pumping after the 1ster March, during the amphibian reproduction period, could cause mortality among juveniles and possibly adults found there. Before 1er March, the water in wetlands would be frozen,” responds a biologist from the ministry.
“We consider that this intervention would not adequately meet the objective of the measure included in the authorization, namely to prevent amphibian deaths during the breeding period,” she adds. Several species actually used the wetlands that Northvolt was authorized to destroy. In some cases, these are endangered turtle species that may have been buried alive and unhatched eggs laid near wetlands.
However, it is not possible to confirm this information independently. The MELCCFP did not carry out any inspections during the backfilling operations, as recently revealed The duty. Only the company monitored the work.
With Dave Christmas