Report - Agence canadienne d'évaluation environnementale

Opinions of participants
It can seem harmless to nibble a few forest hectares here, backfill some hectares
of wetland there, put concrete on a couple of dozen meters of shoreline […] Very
little consideration is given to the cumulative effect of various industrial projects
on a provincial, regional or even local scale, and often we have no idea of the
immense pressures that this can have on various ecosystems.
(DM466, p. 13 and 14)
The main elements addressed dealt with the aquatic environment, wetlands, the flora
and forest stands.
For several participants, the St. Lawrence River is an exceptional ecosystem, and the
aquatic fauna it contains must be preserved. Some participants feared that the good
fishing spots which can be found there will be destroyed (Mr. Marcel Boutin, DM411).
Others talked about the presence of seals in the area (Ms. Michèle Roy and Mr. Ralph
H. Nocon, DM45; Ms. Louise Latulippe, DM196, p. 4). The collectif Mémoire du fleuve
described it in the following words:
[…] I can remember exactly at this time of the year […] the île d’Orléans of my
youth, in the middle of the 1940s, its waters suddenly beginning to swell early in the
morning, at daybreak. In reality, the swelling was patches of belugas and white
porpoises migrating, going upriver among the vermilion-blue vapours of the subzero
waters. I am writing these lines and remembering autumn tides which gave us a gift
of six hundred eels in only one fishing box. We will never see this again […] the St.
Lawrence is a unique biological organism.
(DM570.1, p. 2)
The turbidity which would be caused by the construction work in the aquatic
environment, and the shoreline erosion which could take place with the passing of
LNG tankers were some of the concerns described about the St. Lawrence River
fauna (Ms. Pierrette Bélanger, DM302, p. 55; Ms. Jeanne d’Arc Dubé-Lavoie, DM373,
p. 1). Some participants also believed that the effluent from the project’s facilities
could contribute to the degradation of fish habitats by changing the physicochemical
properties of the environment. According to one of them, “no information was provided
on the noxiousness of various substances included in the effluents, specifically for the
marine fauna and flora. The proponent must absolutely perform a follow-up”
(Ms. Jeanne d’Arc Dubé-Lavoie, DM373, p. 7). On this topic, another participant
repeated that the area affected is a migratory corridor upon which the indirect survival
of many fish species depends, some of which are endangered (Ms. Marie-Julie Roux,
DM628, p. 2). More specifically, the Conseil régional de l’environnement de la
Capitale-Nationale believed that the project could harm the reintroduction of the
Striped Bass in the St. Lawrence River, which began in 2001, as the chosen site to
build the jetty was once a reproductive migratory route for this species, which
disappeared from the estuary at the end of the 1960s (DM74, p. 10).
60 Rabaska Project – Implementation of an LNG Terminal and Related Infrastructure