Wednesday afternoon at 3:59 PM an email landed in my inbox. It was from Nova Scotia Environment and it was short, even terse: Environment Minister Gordon Wilson has issued a ministerial order to govern how Northern Pulp must conduct its orderly shutdown of the mill, today, Jan. 29. The ministerial order and terms and conditions […]
No federal assessment will be required for Northern Pulp’s proposed effluent treatment project
Yesterday, four days before his announcement was due on the Northern Pulp effluent treatment proposal, and less than 24 hours before the deadline for the provincial environment minister to announce his decision, federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson released a statement saying that he had “decided not to designate the Northern Pulp project […]
Saltwire finds one scientist who thinks Northern Pulp’s effluent isn’t toxic
Morning File, Monday, December 9, 2019
News 1. Stadium David Fleming is an economist who has worked with the Greater Halifax Partnership and the North End Business Association, and is now working on PEI. He reviewed the case for public financing of a stadium, and found it wanting. Click here to read “There’s not a good financial case for a publicly […]
(Can we stop) talkin’ ’bout our generations?
Morning File, Tuesday, November 26, 2019
November Subscription Drive: How a paywall can actually make a newspaper better Christine Schmidt in Nieman Lab writes about the Shawnee Mission Post, a local news site started in Johnson County, Kansas in 2010, which relied on advertising-only until it converted to a paywall in 2017. The paper still has advertising (in the form of […]
Northern Pulp’s “political game”
It's decision time for the Nova Scotia government. It will either approve a pipeline for pumping mill effluent into the Northumberland Strait, or won't. And it will either extend the Boat Harbour Act, or won't. Those affected by the mill operation are laying out their case and preparing next moves.
The story of the bleached kraft pulp mill in Pictou County, which has already dragged on for 53 years, is coming to a nail-biting climax. How — and when — it’s going to end is anyone’s guess. Time is running out, and two key dates loom. The first is December 17, 2019, which is the […]
Government moves slowly, except when it moves lightning fast
Morning File, Friday, October 4, 2019
News 1. Twenty years after the Marshall decision, DFO still has no agreement with First Nations communities over fishing management It’s been twenty years since the Marshall decision (in which the Supreme Court of Canada found that Donald Marshall Jr. had a treaty right to fish for eels out of season) and the Department of […]
There’s good water news, but mostly there’s bad water news
Morning File, Thursday, August 15, 2019
News 1. There’s Something in the Water “It was a Saturday morning and Ellen Page was giving up some of what could have been a bit of down time to do a telephone interview about her forthcoming film on environmental racism in Nova Scotia, which will have its world debut this September at the Toronto […]
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 […]