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 paid $0 in taxes in 2019
As the company is in court facing 32 charges of polluting the environment, the promised windfall in tax revenue is proving illusionary.
Atlantic Mining NS Inc., an affiliate of the St. Barbara company Atlantic Gold, which operates the Touquoy open pit gold mine at Moose River, has succeeded in delaying its day in court. Arraigned in Dartmouth Provincial Court, Atlantic Mining NS asked for and received an adjournment until March 15. In September 2020, Nova Scotia Environment […]
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 […]
Nova Scotia has laid charges for 32 environmental infractions against Atlantic Gold
Citizens raise concerns about environmental impacts of gold mining in Nova Scotia's moose country.
Much attention is focused on Crown land in Digby County that is threatened by logging operations. And last week, nine people from Extinction Rebellion were arrested while trying to prevent contractors in the employ of the WestFor consortium from accessing the public forest and moose habitat slated for cutting. But in another part of the […]
Moose River betrayal
In 2008, the approval of the Moose River gold mine was conditioned on the mining company giving the province hundreds of acres of conservation land within four years; 12 years later, there's still no approved plan in place.
The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. On March 31, the Australian company St. Barbara, which last year acquired Atlantic Gold with its open pit gold mine at Moose River and a project to open three more mines along Nova Scotia’s Eastern shore, sent investors a COVID-19 update. It stated: St Barbara’s […]
Atlantic Gold is waging a propaganda blitz in Nova Scotia
By now, many people in Nova Scotia will have seen the Atlantic Gold ads on television, read words of self-praise from the company in newspaper opinion pieces, or received Atlantic Gold flyers in their mailboxes. For the past month or so, Atlantic Gold has been blanketing the province with its propaganda. As the Halifax Examiner […]
Port Wallace Gamble: the real estate boom meets Nova Scotia’s toxic mine legacy
Part 1: The making of a toxic mess and the uncalculated costs of previous gold rushes.
This is Part 1 of a three-part story about the toxic legacy from historic gold mines in Nova Scotia, which its citizens will be paying many millions of dollars to try to clean up, and how the contamination at just one of these sites — Montague Mines in HRM — is still affecting lives today, […]
Nova Scotia government doubles down on gold mining
There were moments during last week’s “Water Not Gold” rally outside the Alt Hotel at the Halifax airport where the “Gold Show” was in progress, when I was reminded of a video from 2011 during Occupy Wall Street. That footage shows protestors marching along Wall Street, calling out money barons, greed, and the neoliberal system […]