The extension of Highway 25 to Sainte-Julienne will lead to the loss of “biodiversity at the local and regional scale” by crossing from end to end a forest qualified as “exceptional”. Quebec still wants to go ahead with the project.
The Ministry of Transport of Quebec (MTQ) published on Wednesday the project notice to lead to the construction of a “national road” of four lanes between Saint-Esprit and Sainte-Julienne, in Lanaudière. Quebec plans a route punctuated with level intersections, 9.2 kilometers long and 90 meters wide.
However, to connect the two villages, the government of François Legault wants to pass the road through a so-called “exceptional” forest area called Saint-Esprit de Montcalm, on the border of Saint-Esprit and Saint-Alexis. “This stand constitutes a rare forest, as well as a refuge forest for threatened or vulnerable species which will be crossed by the right-of-way of the national road”, raises the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC) in a first note sent to the MTQ.
The wooded area is home to seven species of trees known as “of interest”. “The deforestation of the right-of-way within an exceptional forest ecosystem in which there are several species with status constitutes an issue of loss of biodiversity at the local and regional scale”, writes the MELCC.
It is also provided in the initial project notice that the highway encroach on a second wooded area, further north, which could lose “several hundred wild leek plants, […] more than 100,000 individuals of cardamine cut up and […] more than 880 trees with precarious conservation status”. Nearly twenty watercourses would also be crossed by the asphalt section.
The extension of the A-25 will benefit from the Act respecting the acceleration of certain infrastructure projects, adopted in 2020 by the National Assembly. In particular, this reduces the period applicable between the filing of an environmental impact study and the moment when the Council of Ministers can give the green light to the project. It also eliminates the information period provided for in the public hearing process.
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