Northern Pulp — a Paper Excellence company that belongs ultimately to the billionaire corporate empire of the Widjaja family of Indonesia — is giving the Nova Scotia government two months notice that it intends to start legal proceedings to get “more than $100 million” from the province, which it claims represents the losses it has […]
Wastewater from Northern Pulp’s hibernating paper mill is being discharged into the Bay of Fundy
Wastewater from Northern Pulp’s mill is being discharged into the Bay of Fundy. Since July 2020 Northern Pulp has been shipping run-off and “landfill leachate” from its hibernating pulp mill site on Abercrombie Point in Pictou County to Colchester County’s municipal sewage treatment facility in Lower Truro, which discharges into the Bay of Fundy. Invoices […]
Paper Excellence holds a media show and piles on the PR
Northern Pulp’s owner is working on a $350 million “complete transformation” for the mill in Pictou County, but doesn’t say whether any of that money will be public, or why Nova Scotians should trust them.
On the morning of July 15, Iris Communications’ Sean Lewis sent out a press release on behalf of Paper Excellence. It was chockablock with carefully calibrated and curated PR, informing us that Northern Pulp’s 54-year-old pulp mill in Pictou County was set to become “a “best-in-class operation” and “one of the world’s cleanest, most environmentally […]
Not only the lonely are lonely during COVID-19
Morning File, Wednesday, June 17, 2020
News 1. Dead Wrong on Uncover Tim Bousquet’s podcast Dead Wrong, on CBC’s Uncover, is now live and you can listen to the first couple of episodes here. Everyone at the Examiner knows how hard he’s worked on this podcast for the past several months, but, of course, his work on the Dead Wrong series […]
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, […]
Dirty Dealing
Part 3: Elevated Levels of Cancer-Causing Air Emissions Coming from Abercrombie Pulp Mill, Peer-Reviewed Study Reveals
In a study published in 2017, Dalhousie University researchers reported that air levels of three volatile organic compounds (VOCs) near the Abercrombie pulp mill in Pictou County exceeded cancer risk thresholds and “are of primary health concern in terms of population risk.” Over an eight-year period (2006-2013), 1,3-butadiene, benzene, and carbon tetrachloride were found to […]