On December 20, 2019 Premier Stephen McNeil announced that the province would be respecting the Boat Harbour Act, and that Northern Pulp would have to stop pumping its effluent into the Boat Harbour treatment facility on January 31, 2020. Without the use of Boat Harbour, the Northern Pulp mill in Pictou County would have no...
Deciding Northern Pulp’s future
A tangled mess of dubious science, loans, and liabilities will determine how government officials will act in coming days — and how much it will cost Nova Scotians.
Nova Scotia’s business minister Geoff MacLellan says it’s not the time to talk about all the money that Northern Pulp owes the province, and it won’t be until after environment minister Gordon Wilson makes his decision on the mill’s new effluent treatment facility on or before December 17. CBC reporter Michael Gorman notes that MacLellan […]
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 […]
“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, […]
Udderly ridiculous: Adventures in bovine boudoir
Morning File, Monday, October 22, 2018
1. Cannabis is still legal “And the story is still news,” writes Stephen Kimber: Sorry, it will be for more time than you might like. It’s what happens when you become one of the first countries in the world to admit it’s OK to smoke pot. Just sit back, relax and… Click here to read […]
Battle for the Mill
The plan to pipe effluent from the Northern Pulp Mill into the Northumberland Strait is dividing the community of Pictou, pitting neighbour against neighbour and fishermen against mill workers.
This is a follow-up to Linda Pannozzo’s investigative articles in The Halifax Examiner detailing the issues around Northern Pulp’s proposed effluent treatment and disposal system: Dirty Dealing Part 1: Northern Pulp mill and the province are set to roll the dice with Boat Harbour’s replacement, but a cleaner alternative exists; Dirty Dealing Part 2: Wading through the quagmire […]
Northern Pulp bullies Canada’s biggest bookstore chain, wins… and then loses
The good news is that the mill’s heavy-handed attack on freedom of expression and the bookseller’s own cowed response appear to have backfired. The bad news is that, “in 2017, a company can use its power to shut down a book signing in a small bookstore in a small town.”
Joan Baxter’s personal Northern Pulp story begins on “one of those stunningly clear, blue-sky mornings that nature sometimes bestows on Nova Scotia.” It was June 2, 2016, and Baxter had decided to start the day with a run near her home in Colchester County, NS. But as soon as she stepped outside, “the air was...
The hanging of Daniel Sampson: Morning File, Tuesday, December 5, 2017
News 1. IMP “The city has dropped its Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP), a hefty 193-page document designed to help Halifax achieve its Regional Plan target of reducing the share of trips we all make in private vehicles,” reports Erica Butler: In 2006, council set a goal to reduce vehicle trips down to 70 per cent […]
Dirty Dealing
Northern Pulp Mill and the province are set to roll the dice with Boat Harbour’s replacement, but a cleaner alternative exists.
This once pristine tidal estuary, Boat Harbour has been used as an industrial waste lagoon for the Abercrombie pulp mill (now Northern Pulp) near Pictou for fifty years. Photo courtesy Dave Gunning. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. Earlier this month a delegation of fishers from Nova Scotia, PEI, and […]