Cover photo: the tailings facility at the Touquoy gold mine. Photo: Saint Mary’s River Association Atlantic Gold’s manager of environment and permitting, James Millard, calls it a “spill” or a “loss of control” caused by a “gasket failure.” By whatever name, the event happened on the night of January 3, 2019, at the company’s open...
Pulp Culture
How Nova Scotia’s Faustian bargain with the pulp industry may leave the sawmills in ruins
I wonder if Billy Freeman, a sixth generation saw-miller with 15 years experience, saw this juncture coming. A few weeks ago, Freeman, the process improvement manager at Harry Freeman and Son Ltd. in Greenfield, Nova Scotia wrote an illuminating op-ed in the Chronicle Herald supporting Northern Pulp in its request for an extension of the...
The Canso Chemicals mystery: With the chemical plant long gone, why is the company still alive? And what about all that mercury pollution?
Canso Chemicals hasn’t produced any chemicals for 29 years, but — contrary to what I wrote in the Halifax Examiner in “Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions” — the company lives on. Sort of. For two decades Canso Chemicals produced chlorine for the pulping process...
Dalhousie researcher breaks silence over pulp mill’s cancer-causing air emissions
Dalhousie University researcher Emma Hoffman has come forward to defend her 2017 ambient air quality study about cancer-causing air emissions detected near the Northern Pulp mill after finding that her study was “misrepresented” in the mill’s recently registered Environmental Assessment [EA] for its proposed effluent treatment facility. In Part 3 of the “Dirty Dealing” series, I...
The abandoned tidal turbine still sits on the bottom of the Minas Basin, and taxpayers are probably on the hook for removing it
The future of a massive, five-storey high tidal turbine sitting on the bottom of the Bay of Fundy off the coast of Parrsboro continues to represent a financial sinkhole for Nova Scotia taxpayers. Yesterday, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski officially accepted a letter from the lawyer representing Grant Thornton, the receiver appointed by...
Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions
Cover photo: “Point D,” where treated Northern Pulp wastewater currently flows from Boat Harbour into the Northumberland Strait, just a few hundred metres from Pictou Landing First Nation. There is much to wade through in the documents Northern Pulp submitted to Nova Scotia Environment on February 7, 2019, when it registered its “Replacement Effluent Treatment […]
Bobbleheaded Zach joins the Public Accounts follies
Education Minister Zach Churchill was just filling in on the Public Accounts Committee last week, filling in Liberal-interest spin in the usual please-the-premier way. And so it went. Funny, but...
I’m almost certain Nova Scotia Education Minister Zach Churchill is not really a Bobblehead. He was just playing one in the legislature’s Public Accounts Committee last week. Last week, Churchill joined the Fangless Five and the Insensate Seven as he moved his head up and down in time with his premier on the issue of...
Naturalists sue province for failing to protect endangered species
Another branch of the McNeil government is being taken to court, this time for not doing enough to protect and preserve endangered species such as the mainland moose, barn swallow, monarch butterfly, and hoary willow. A judge will review the alleged failure of the Lands and Forestry Minister to take actions mandated under the Endangered...
The Yarmouth ferry is going to Bar Harbor — a little late, and at some unknown cost…
Bay Ferries has announced that the Alakai ferry — dubbed “The Cat” — will begin sailing between Yarmouth and Bar Harbor, Maine starting June 21. On its website, the company says that date is “subject to change” because of the renovations required to the ferry terminal in Maine. A public hearing will take place in […]
For 21 years, a known sexual predator was allowed to prey on boys held at the Youth Training Centre in Waterville: lawsuits
A known sexual predator was allowed to prey on boys held at the Youth Training Centre in Waterville. That is the allegation raised by lawyer Mike Dull on behalf on seven men who have filed lawsuits against the province for abuse they say they suffered at Waterville. The alleged abuse at the hands of a […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 39
- Next Page »