It didn’t take Northern Pulp long to start issuing thinly veiled threats. Just before noon Tuesday, Nova Scotia Environment Minister Gordon Wilson announced that the company that owns the Pictou County pulp mill would have to submit a full environmental assessment report for its new effluent treatment facility. That process that could take two years, […]
Pictou Landing First Nation to Stephen McNeil: Honour the Boat Harbour Act and No Pipe in the Strait
The day-by-day countdown to the closing of Boat Harbour happens on a large painting erected in front of the Pictou Landing First Nation band council office. The painting depicts Boat Harbour as it was before it was dammed (and damned) in 1966, transformed from a healthy tidal estuary to a stinking lagoon for the toxic […]
We are eagerly awaiting the ridiculous architectural renderings that are certain to accompany the stadium sales pitch
Morning File, Monday, March 25, 2019
1. Leading With Transit “Listen, I wouldn’t blame you if you were done with discussing the future of transit in Halifax,” writes Examiner transportation columnist Erica Butler: We had the Moving Forward Together (MFT) plan, for which thousands of folks chimed in with their hopes and dreams for buses in the region. Then we had […]
Here are the names and phone numbers of the contractors failing to clear your sidewalks
Morning File, Friday, March 8, 2019
1. Northern Pulp Yesterday, the Halifax Examiner published two stories related to Northern Pulp Mill’s environmental impacts. In the first, Joan Baxter looks at the curious case of Canso Chemicals: For two decades Canso Chemicals produced chlorine for the pulping process at a site adjacent to the pulp mill on Abercrombie Point in Pictou County, […]
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 […]
“Everything won’t stink so bad”
The countdown to Boat Harbour closure begins
The children of Pictou Landing First Nation didn’t mince words when they addressed the standing-room-only audience that had gathered in their school gymnasium on January 31, 2019 to mark the start of the one-year countdown to the legislated closure of Boat Harbour. They “hate” Boat Harbour. It makes them “sad.” And “it stinks.” Once the […]
Containing Northern Pulp’s mess
A half century of toxic waste in Boat Harbour, a leaky pipeline, and what happens next in the mill saga.
The numbers are staggering. Over the past 51 years, the bleached kraft pulp mill on Abercrombie Point in Pictou County has piped about 1.25 trillion litres of toxic effluent into Boat Harbour.[1] That’s enough to fill about half a million Olympic-size swimming pools, or a pipeline one metre in diameter stretching about 1.6 million kilometres, […]
Dirty Dealing
Part 4: Message Control and the Northern Pulp Mill’s Cancer-Causing Air Emissions
Nova Scotia Lands, a provincial crown corporation charged with cleaning up Boat Harbour, played a role in silencing two Dalhousie University researchers whose work studied air pollution coming from the Northern Pulp mill, the Halifax Examiner has learned. In Part 3 of the Dirty Dealing series, I reported on the researchers’ 2017 ambient air study, which revealed […]
Dirty Dealing
Part 3: Elevated Levels of Cancer-Causing Air Emissions Coming from Abercrombie Pulp Mill, Peer-Reviewed Study Reveals
In a study published in 2017, Dalhousie University researchers reported that air levels of three volatile organic compounds (VOCs) near the Abercrombie pulp mill in Pictou County exceeded cancer risk thresholds and “are of primary health concern in terms of population risk.” Over an eight-year period (2006-2013), 1,3-butadiene, benzene, and carbon tetrachloride were found to […]