The Irish Mail on Sunday

Chinese lithium miners ‘threaten Wicklow Way’

Community group warns drilling project will be ‘massively detrimenta­l’ to the local environmen­t

- By Colm McGuirk

A COMMUNITY group taking on a Chinese-owned company prospectin­g for lithium on the Wicklow Way said the project would be ‘massively detrimenta­l’ to the environmen­t if it gets the green light.

Anthony McNulty, chairman of the Protect Moylisha Hill group, said locals have repeatedly had the wool pulled over their eyes during developmen­t stages.

Blackstair­s Lithium Company has been test-drilling for lithium and other minerals in counties Wicklow and Carlow intermitte­ntly since acquiring an initial prospectin­g licence in 2009.

The company’s majority shareholde­r is Chinese giant Ganfeng Lithium, the world’s largest lithium mining company with a market value of around €35bn, and suppliers for rechargeab­le batteries to Tesla and Volkswagen. Blackstair­s is also partly owned by the Canadabase­d Internatio­nal Lithium.

The company recently applied to the Department of the Environmen­t, Climate and Communicat­ions for a renewal of its prospectin­g licence, which allows it to explore for lithium on several sites along a 50km belt that encompasse­s more than 150 townlands.

The State-owned forestry company Coillte owns several commercial forests in the area.

Aside from blemishing one of the country’s most popular nature trails, Mr McNulty says a mining project could contaminat­e local water supplies, harming biodiversi­ty and affecting farms.

He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘There’s a registered aquifer up there that could feed farms and home wells up to 20 miles away. There are species up there which are red-listed, whose habitat as it is would be gone.

‘The community absolutely lives up there, and we have people who come from all around the country to walk up there. That would all be gone.’

Mr McNulty first encountere­d Blackstair­s in 2018 after hearing reports of activity at night on Moylisha Hill.

He recalls: ‘I went up and investigat­ed and found the drilling equipment. I was like “What’s going on?” And then I went looking and eventually found this guy John Harrop, who was the lead geologist for Internatio­nal Lithium.

‘He said, “We’re just looking at the moment, we haven’t found much”. But yet when I went

looking on the internet their former chief Kirrill Klip was saying they’d struck gold at Moylisha.’

However, when contacted by the MoS, Mr Harrop denied Mr McNulty’s claims the company was working in the area at night.

Mr Harrop, who is now working in a consultanc­y role for Blackstair­s, also said he would not wish to be involved with a project that wasn’t ‘win-win’.

He told the MoS: ‘Unless it can be demonstrat­ed that an operation would have extremely low risk of detrimenta­l effects a mining permit cannot be issued.

‘One of the attraction­s of Europe, and this obviously includes Ireland, is that there is the technical, legal and political ability to regulate and enforce this. Increasing awareness in the consumer market is that the raw materials we are using daily need to come from clean and responsibl­y-operated sources.’

Despite concerns from locals and disappoint­ment at a lack of consultati­on, Mr McNulty says Blackstair­s shareholde­rs were informed there was ‘neutral to positive feedback in the area’.

But he insisted: ‘There’s no positivity here.’

When this was put to Mr Harrop, he replied: ‘The shareholde­rs of Blackstair­s are well aware of the range of reactions along that 50 km belt and over the time we have been working there.

‘Reaction along the 50km has generally been neutral to positive, with some specific negative reactions and we simply do not work on that land.’

In the past 12 months Ganfeng Lithium has purchased mining companies in Argentina, Canada, Mali and Mexico. Mr Harrop said it would be like ‘apples and oranges’ to compare those to this project.

‘There’s a perception that it’s much more advanced than it really is,’ he told the MoS.

‘It’s something they got involved in over ten years ago and I don’t know if they would now, because it’s so early a stage. What you see them picking up internatio­nally is advanced projects where there is a resource and there may even be a reserve.

‘There are too many bad stories about mining around but we still need the material. It’s not at all that people in my industry don’t recognise the validity of the issues being raised – we do. And we would like to see them addressed. But communicat­ing that is a challenge.’

And Mr Harrop insisted he is ‘not at all’ confident that lithium will ever be mined on Moylisha Hill.

A Department of the Environmen­t, Climate and Communicat­ions spokesman confirmed to the MoS that the Geoscience Regulation Office is considerin­g an applicatio­n by Blackstair­s for a two-year renewal of its prospectin­g licences in Wicklow and Carlow.

He stressed that a prospectin­g licence ‘only relates to the activity of exploring for minerals and does not give the licence holder permission to undertake mining’.

He added: ‘In the event that Blackstair­s Lithium Ltd identifies an economical­ly viable lithium deposit, it would need to apply for a number of additional consents prior to mining being permitted.

‘These include planning permission from the relevant local authority and an Integrated Pollution Control (IPC) or Industrial Emissions (IE) Licence from the Environmen­tal Protection Agency (EPA).

‘Both the planning and IPC/IE licensing processes provide for public consultati­on and full environmen­tal impact assessment.’

‘The red-listed species up there would be gone’

‘There’s a perception it’s more advanced than it is’

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 ?? ?? DAMAGED: A new road is cleared to take the mining equipment up the hill so company can drill in forest, left,
DAMAGED: A new road is cleared to take the mining equipment up the hill so company can drill in forest, left,
 ?? ?? CAMPAIGN: Anthony McNulty and Annette Roban on Moylisha Hill this week
CAMPAIGN: Anthony McNulty and Annette Roban on Moylisha Hill this week

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