I hadn’t even made it into Canso when I happened upon the first person willing and eager to speak her mind on the proposed spaceport that Maritime Launch Services wants to construct in the picturesque community at the very end of Highway 16, an area that boasts spectacular coastline, one ocean-side provincial park and another […]
Northern Pulp Mill’s missing environmental data
The mill says its effluent comfortably meets federal regulations, but a new study published by Dalhousie researchers suggests there is no way to know.
Cover photo courtesy Gerard James Halfyard. If Premier Stephen McNeil is wavering on the Northern Pulp / Paper Excellence file, entertaining notions on amending the Boat Harbour Act so that effluent from the Pictou County pulp mill can continue to flow into the lagoon after January 31, 2020, he would do well to put off […]
Water, water everywhere
Morning File, Thursday, April 11, 2019
News 1. Feds announce environmental assessment for Boat Harbour plan Jennifer Henderson has the latest on the Boat Harbour cleanup plan. Yesterday, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced it would be undertaking an environmental assessment. Henderson explains the lagoons are where tens of million of litres of daily effluent from the kraft pulp mill at […]
Boat Harbour cleanup to be subjected to environmental review
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced yesterday it was launching an environmental assessment of the proposed cleanup of the Boat Harbour lagoons where tens of million of litres of daily effluent from the kraft pulp mill at Abercrombie Point have been stored, aerated, and released into the Northumberland Strait for 50 years. Tonnes of watery […]
Spill at Moose River gold mine raises environmental concerns
Atlantic Gold springs an effluent leak, plugs a new mine, and sells itself to investors
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 […]
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 […]
Friends of St. Mary’s River say “NOPE” to Atlantic Gold
For many years, when the St. Mary’s River Association (or SMRA) held meetings in Sherbrooke on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, the group members’ purpose was primarily to report on the headway they were making in their efforts to achieve their vision of “Health for our river, the Atlantic salmon and our community.” Members would gather […]
The world’s top expert on deep sea drilling disasters worries about “the relatively high likelihoods” of a blowout at BP’s Scotian Shelf operation
Morning File, Thursday, May 10, 2018
News 1. Blowout Antonia Juhasz, who is an energy analyst, author, and investigative journalist specializing in oil, has taken an interest in Nova Scotia’s offshore, and so asked Robert Bea to have a look at the regulatory approval for BP’s drilling on the Scotian Shelf. Bea was the right person for Juhasz to ask. Bea […]