The Legault government has just granted $22 million in public funds to finance the construction of a “temporary access road” to allow the construction of the Northvolt mega factory. The company has already started work on the site, but the analysis of its request to destroy wetlands is still underway at the Quebec Ministry of the Environment.
The Legault government published Wednesday in the Official Gazette of Quebec the decree which grants $22.6 million to the City of Saint-Basile-le-Grand “for the development and dismantling of a temporary access road necessary for the realization of the Batteries Northvolt Nord-Amérique Inc project . linked to the battery sector”.
The decree is dated 1er November 2023, several days before the Ministry of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks (MELCCFP) completed its analysis to determine whether the project should be submitted to the environmental assessment process normally intended for large-scale industrial projects.
The site of the future factory is located partly on the territory of this municipality and the municipality of McMasterville, near Route 116.
“Due to the heavy traffic on these two transportation infrastructures, access to this site is currently inadequate and unsafe for the estimated traffic flows,” specifies the decree. In this context, this road will mainly be used to accommodate the high volume of heavy traffic that will result from “construction” and “start-up” of the industrial project.
The road built at the expense of Quebec taxpayers is part of the envelope of more than a billion dollars promised by the CAQ government for the realization of the Swedish multinational’s project. In the Official Gazette last week, financial support of $200 million from Investissement Québec was also announced for “financing preliminary activities”.
Work in progress
It must be said that Northvolt hopes to shortly begin preparing the site for its factory, which involves destroying dozens of wetlands and wooded areas that serve as habitat for several wildlife species, including endangered species. To comply with legislation meant to protect migratory birds in Canada, it must have destroyed potential nesting sites before next spring.
Studies detailing the biodiversity present on the site and carried out by a private firm mandated by Northvolt have also been submitted to the MELCCFP. The ministry, which is currently analyzing a request for “intervention” in the wetlands of the site (which has 74 wetlands), will however not go on site to verify the information included in the documents filed by Northvolt to obtain the necessary authorizations to begin work.
It is up to the project promoter who wants to fill in or raze the natural environments of the site to “provide compliant information”, specifies the ministry in a written response sent on Tuesday. “Subsequently, through a rigorous and objective approach, the environmental analysis process allows the information provided by the applicant to be assessed on its merits. »
Some work involving an excavator has already started this week, as revealed on Monday The duty. We therefore asked the ministry on Monday if this work, which consists of “small excavations”, was permitted before obtaining all the authorizations.
“There are works which are not subject to prior obtaining of ministerial authorization or which are exempted from it by the Regulation respecting the supervision of activities based on their impact on the environment could be carried out as the drilling or exploratory geotechnical surveys unless they are carried out in water environments,” the MELCCFP finally responded on Wednesday.
” Lack of transparency “
The factory is “not located on SEPAQ land [Société des établissements de plein air du Québec] “, dropped the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, last Friday at the podium of the Council on International Relations of Montreal. The location envisaged for its installation “is probably a place where fish have three eyes,” he added, eliciting laughter from the audience.
Around a hundred biodiversity specialists from 10 Quebec universities deplored last week, in The duty, the “lack of transparency” surrounding the Northvolt project. “It is clear that less than a year after COP15 in Montreal, the collapse of biodiversity still does not seem to be a major issue for the provincial government.”
We find on this site “one of the last wetlands in the region, which is home to numerous wildlife species, eight of which are threatened and legally protected, such as bank swallows, whose population fell by 99% between 1970 and 2019 », they added.