Paper Excellence is on a desperate charm offensive in Nova Scotia, trying to build “trust,” get support to refit and re-open its Pictou County Northern Pulp mill, make people believe that the company has somehow transformed itself overnight, and convince us all to forget its many egregious environmental, social, and political transgressions and bullying tactics....
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, […]
Auditor General: $2 billion QEII redevelopment at risk for fraud
The province’s auditor general released a critical report yesterday that looked at the $2 billion project to expand the Halifax Infirmary and build a new Community Outpatient Centre at Bayers Lake to replace the decrepit Victoria General and Centennial buildings. Michael Pickup’s strongest criticism and first recommendation declared: “The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal...
Boat Harbour: How to clean up a toxic soup
Fifty-two years of toxic sludge — enough to fill 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools to the brim. That’s the cleanup job now in the late planning stages for Boat Harbour. Boat Harbour is an expanse of stanky brown holding ponds or “lagoons” at an effluent treatment facility located next-door to the Pictou Landing First Nation. “Nova...
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, […]