Hailed as green energy source, northern Quebec lithium project divides Cree – by Stephane Blais (CBC News Canada – February 6, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

‘If the water becomes contaminated by the mine, I don’t see how we can limit the damage’

Type the word “Nemaska” into a search engine and most results refer to Nemaska Lithium, the company that sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 before being partly bought out by the Quebec government’s investment agency. The episode resulted in tens of thousands of small investors losing significant savings.

However, Nemaska is above all a Cree community in the heart of the boreal forest, more than 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. They share their territory with a wide variety of species, and caribou herds have long visited the area, drawn by its abundance of lichen.

These fragile ecosystems are home to a multitude of threatened species that will soon have to deal with new visitors: starting in 2025, approximately 15 heavy trucks a day will roar through these ancestral hunting grounds carrying the thousands of tonnes of ore that Nemaska Lithium plans to mine.

According to the promoters, the region contains some of the world’s largest deposits of spodumene, a rock from which lithium — key to the energy transition and the electrification of transport networks — is extracted.

For the rest of this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/quebec-lithium-division-1.6739010