On November 1, 2018, a year after Atlantic Gold produced its first gold bar at its Touquoy open pit mine in Moose River, 11 provincial public servants gathered for a two-hour meeting with four high-level representatives of the gold mining company. Two were with Nova Scotia Environment, six with Lands and Forestry, and three with […]
Millbrook First Nation to Atlantic Gold and government regulators: “We oppose the Beaver Dam mine project”
Millbrook First Nation Chief Bob Gloade knows that his band has no veto power over a new open pit gold mine planned for Beaver Dam, just a stone’s throw from a Millbrook satellite community in Halifax Regional Municipality, but he is hoping the project can be stopped through consultation. That way, he says, there will […]
Expansion of gold mining on the Eastern Shore meeting with stiff resistance
The public and Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia have until December 16 to comment on this latest round, but in a letter from June, Millbrook First Nation said they "do not support" the mine on the Eastern Shore.
Atlantic Mining Nova Scotia (AMNS) looks bound and determined to mine paradise, blast a giant hole deep into the earth at Beaver Dam in a rural part of the Halifax Regional Municipality just over an hour’s drive from downtown Dartmouth, and extract 56 million tonnes of material from the bowels of this small province between 2023 […]
Updated: Photos suggest that there is a tailings leak at Atlantic Gold’s Moose River gold mine
Latest update: On Monday morning (Aug. 30), we published an update (below) with a statement from Dustin O’Leary, spokesperson for Atlantic Gold and Atlantic Mining NS, subsidiaries of the Australian company St Barbara that owns the open pit Touquoy gold mine in Moose River, HRM. O’Leary stated that “there is no leak of any kind […]
Who benefits from Atlantic Gold’s Nova Scotia operations?
Firm with gold mines on the Eastern Shore pays no taxes and low wages to its employees while it gets large government subsidies and maximizes profits. Oh, and it will leave toxic mine tailings that will be with us forever.
In mid-May, Laird Brownlie, head of external affairs for Australia’s St Barbara Ltd that acquired Atlantic Gold and its mining operations in Nova Scotia in 2019 for $722 million, sent out an email — a “special bulletin” — about the company’s proposed modifications at its Touquoy open pit gold mine in Moose River. Brownlie’s message […]
Atlantic Gold’s imaginary conservation land
In 2008, Atlantic Gold was given provincial approval for the gigantic Touquoy open pit gold mine with the condition that within 4 years the company buy and give the province nearby land for conservation purposes. 13 years later, that condition is still unmet, and the province is making no real effort to enforce it.
Atlantic Gold has just announced that in “late spring/early summer 2021” it will be undertaking a new Class 1 Environmental Assessment for modifications to its open pit Touquoy gold mine in Moose River. Among other things, the company wants to expand its waste rock storage area that is already sky-high, prepare to store tailings in […]
Atlantic Gold plans to mine “paradise”
Citizens near Beaver Dam and Moose River raise the alarm about the high environmental costs of open pit gold mines in eastern Nova Scotia, the province’s “sacrifice zone.”
Debbie Marlborough lives just 15 kilometres as the crow flies — 50 kilometres by road — from the giant crater, massive tailings pond, and mountains of waste rock at Atlantic Gold’s Touquoy open pit gold mine in Moose River. She’s never been able to make herself go and see it. Marlborough says that even though […]
Sacrificing wild Atlantic salmon for gold
A project that is undoing environmental damage from acid rain finds itself under threat from a gold mine proposed for Beaver Dam.
We’re standing on the snow-covered banks of the Killag River beside the lime doser, a white silo that has been calibrated with intricate controls to apply just the right amount of lime into the river every day. Edmund Halfyard, a biologist working with the Nova Scotia Salmon Association, tells me that the “right amount” — […]
Atlantic Gold’s lobbying blitz
The company is now in court on charges of harming the environment, regulators are casting a wary eye at its plans for future environmental protection, and investors are getting worried, so Atlantic Gold has hired a lobbyist to fast track federal approval of its Nova Scotia projects.
Last year it was a propaganda blitz. For several weeks in the spring of 2020, Atlantic Gold, which operates an open pit gold mine in Moose River in the Halifax Regional Municipality and wants to open three more along the Eastern Shore, bombarded people in Nova Scotia with its PR. Atlantic Gold’s owner, Australia’s St […]
Atlantic Gold is going to court
The St. Barbara Limited company is facing 32 environmental charges, even as more complaints roll in.
Just over a month after the construction company contracted by Atlantic Gold to excavate clay for the tailings facility at its open pit gold mine at Moose River assured Krista Gillis of Mooseland that the excavation work wouldn’t cause any more sedimentation in a nearby brook, it has happened again. On Saturday, January 17, Gillis […]