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 […]
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 […]
Public agencies lost at least $2.2 million on aioTV
Morning File, Tuesday, March 5, 2019
News 1. Northern Pulp This item is written by Jennifer Henderson. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has received 3,200 submissions from people with an interest in whether the federal regulator should carry out a review of Northern Pulp’s plan to pipe treated effluent 4.1 kilometers out into prime lobster fishing area in the Northumberland Strait. […]
UARB submission raises safety concerns about Alton Gas project
A retired geologist who worked for the province of Nova Scotia as well as the mining giant INCO says he has safety concerns about the proposed Alton Natural Gas Storage Project. Robert Grantham’s letter to the Utility and Review Board (UARB) states not enough information has been made public about the rock formation near Alton...
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, […]
All in All It’s Just Another Slick in the Harbour
Morning File, Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Hi, I’m Chris Benjamin, today’s guest writer. I’m a journalist as well as a writer and editor of books — fiction and non-fiction — and the managing editor of Atlantic Books Today Magazine. Environment and social justice are my beats. News 1. Oil spills, past and present The Canadian Coast Guard is investigating what appears to […]
The new gas economy: the offshore, pipelines, and Alton Gas
Most of the natural gas used in Nova Scotia came from the Sable Island gas field. But now, as the offshore gas industry collapses, Heritage Gas is looking to increase sales and keep prices low by importing gas from the U.S. and western Canada to the Alton Gas storage project.
No one who keeps an eye on the Nova Scotia energy scene was surprised to learn that EnCana plans to halt production at its ill-starred Deep Panuke offshore gas development in two to three years. Not only was the project 10 years late and a billion dollars over budget, water problems have plagued it, reducing...