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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Testing the Limits
Part 2: The Examiner Goes on the Road in Search of an Endangered Lichen. (A Photo Essay)
On a clear, crisp Sunday morning in March, Tim Bousquet and I drove about 30 minutes inland from Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia to Twin Lakes, an area slated to be clearcut by Northern Pulp. As I reported in Part 1 of “Testing the Limits,” at the end of February the Abercrombie pulp giant posted several […]