Patricia Laederich was not expecting any major revelations as she got ready to take part in the eighth instalment of an ongoing public debate about plans by minerals multinational Imerys to create a lithium mine at Échassières, a village in the département or county of Allier in central France. “What I've felt so far has been disappointment, frustration. Every time we've asked Imerys specific questions, all we've got are evasive answers,” lamented the retired publishing professional, who is also an active member of the association 'Préservons la forêt des Colettes' (PFC), which opposes the project.
The agenda for the meeting, held on Monday, April 22th in the multi-purpose hall of nearby Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, appeared promising on paper, focusing on the ecological and health impact of the potential mine. Given the monumental scale of the project, one can expect that impact to be massive.
The aim is to establish, by 2028, the second-largest lithium mine in Europe in the foothills of France's Massif Central, with an annual production target of 34,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide for at least twenty-five years. This raw material would be enough to produce 663,000 electric vehicle batteries a year, making a significant contribution to Europe's transition away from internal combustion engines while also enhancing “energy sovereignty”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
However, achieving this result also involves extracting 2.1 million tonnes of granite from La Bosse, the promontory overlooking the nearby Bourbonnais plain that Imerys plans to excavate to a depth of more than 400 metres. “This means 5,500 tonnes of rock extracted per day! That's equivalent to 4,500 Renault Clios, or a thousand elephants, coming out of Échassières every day,” Patricia told the audience of 120 people, with 40 participating via video conference, once the meeting had begun.
When it came to the mountains of mining waste and other solid residues produced “40% will be buried in the form of cemented paste” in the mine galleries as they are depleted, explained Grégoire Jean, director of research and development at Imerys, and “25% will be dried and stored in the kaolin quarry pit”. This quarry, adjacent to the planned mine, has been operated by his employer since 2005.
Fears over forest
Both solutions worried Étienne Philippe, another PFC campaigner. “Rain will fall on the mining waste stored outdoors and carry away the metals released during crushing into the aquifers and watercourses,” said the former local government employee. As for backfilling, he doubted that the process would prevent water infiltration, especially considering the daily use of explosives to make the tunnels, which he believed could cause fissures in the granite rock.
“The concern is that the aquifers will be sucked towards the bottom of the mine,” explained Étienne Philippe. “And La Bosse acts a water tower for the region. It has 350 sources, and no one can guarantee that they will continue to flow when the mine is operational.”
Any such fall in water table levels could have damaging effects on the Forêt des Colettes, a beautiful forested upland area of 4,000 hectares, mainly populated by oaks and beeches, which has already been hit by climate change. “Since 2019 we have just been working in crisis mode,” Cyril Métier, head of the south Allier unit at the Office National des Forêts (ONF) forestry body, told the attentive audience. “The trees have dried out, there is a drop in sap flow, a drop in growth. From three hundred observation points, it was found that 3% of the beech trees were already dead.”
However the expert, invited to the Saint-Pourçain meeting by the Commission Nationale du Débat Public (CNDP) - an independent body that intervenes to ensure public debate on plans with a major environmental impact - does not share campaigners' concerns about the lithium project. “For me, the mine will not affect the Colettes [forest]. Trees do not take water from the ground but from the sky,” he said, noting that their roots do not penetrate deep enough to be affected by a fall in aquifer levels.
Once it has been removed from surrounding material through an extraction process carried out at Échassières, the lithium-bearing mica, all 330,000 tonnes per year of it, will be moved through pipelines to a loading dock. This is due to be built on farmland at Saint-Bonnet-de-Rochefort, some 15 kilometres away down the slopes of the Massif Central. From there it will be taken by train to a conversion plant earmarked for development on an industrial brownfield site within the Montluçon conurbation some 60 kilometres to the north west.
The extraction of lithium hydroxide there will take place in different stages, including the calcination of mica in a furnace of such voracious energy appetite that it leaves Patricia Laederich astounded. “This gas furnace would guzzle 495 gigawatt-hours [GWh], equivalent to the domestic energy consumption of 45,000 households, nearly 100,000 residents!” she exclaimed. Yet the Montluçon area itself boasts a mere 65,000 inhabitants.
This process also requires the use of chemical reagents such as sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, soda ash, and lime. When pressed about the plant's potential Seveso classification – a reference to rules governing the handling of potentially hazardous materials - Grégoire Jean from Imerys remained evasive, suggesting that “it depends on the nature and quantity of the substances”. However, he later conceded that around 11,000 tonnes of residue were expected to be dispatched annually to designated hazardous waste storage facilities known as ISDDs.
Asked for her views, Fabienne Thiery, chair of the Allier branch of the environmental protection federation France Nature Environnement, challenged the very basis of Imerys's project and the government's policy of reviving mining activity in France. “We're using the most devastating, polluting and energy-intensive industry to address the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss,” she observed. “It's becoming schizophrenic.”
Schizophrenia or double-speak? Guillaume, representing the local Bourbonnais section of the Soulèvements de la Terre environmental collective, had few doubts on this. “Everything is geared towards economic development as we know it, but they will cite the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report because doing so makes the right noises,” he commented. “Imerys invokes climate change, but never talks about the destination of lithium batteries, about the fact that we can have electric mini-cars consuming 5 kWh when SUVs consume 100.”
Launched on March 12th, the public consultation period will continue until early July with six further meetings one of which, on May 30th in Vichy, is awaited with particular anticipation as it will focus on the impact on water. After that the National Public Debate Commission will have two months to draft a report, which will have no binding effect. The only obligation imposed on the project owner is to respond to comments within three months of receiving them.
Nor can this consultation, mandated by law for all projects involving an investment exceeding 600 million euros – Imerys' project is estimated at one billion euros – suspend or delay the plans for the mine. The company intends to submit applications for permission to build the construction of pilot plants as early as June. The timing of the consultation is a sore point for Joseph, who is from the local campaign group Stop Mines 03. “It was begun before all the impact studies,” the activist said, lamenting the fact that the public has thus been left in the dark about lots of information. He attacked the process as a “diplomatic charade”, though he conceded that the meetings “do allow citizens to critically assess Imerys's statements”.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter