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 […]
The French Connection
People in southern France are battling pollution at a paper mill owned by a corporate behemoth: Paper Excellence Canada, the owner of the Northern Pulp Mill in Nova Scotia
They call their association the “Les Flamants Roses du Trébon” or LFRT (Flamingos of Trébon), and it’s a collective of residents in southern France who are fighting to have the six-decades-old Fibre Excellence Tarascon pulp mill in the province of Alpes-Côte d’Azur clean up its environmental act. French media report that the mill is owned […]
Lobster: the last, best fishery
Part 1: Stocks are healthy, but why?
Lobster stocks in Atlantic Canada have been flourishing in recent years, ironically not just because of conservation measures, but also because of two ecological disasters — the collapse of groundfish stocks and climate change. But can the lobster fishery survive with current rates and rules for harvesting as waters continue to warm and ecosystems change? […]
Independent inshore lobster fishers fear the Clearwater purchase could decimate their livelihoods
At a November 12 press conference, Sipekne’katik First Nation Chief Mike Sack announced that his Band was launching “hundreds” of lawsuits related to the way governments, some commercial fishers, and the RCMP reacted to its launch of its moderate livelihood fishery on September 17, the 21st anniversary of the landmark Marshall decision that affirmed Mi’kmaq […]
Department of Environment slams Northern Pulp’s environmental assessment as “insufficient”
Paper Excellence Canada’s actions suggest maybe it never intended to operate Northern Pulp past 2020.
The Nova Scotia Department of Environment has listed nine pages worth of missing information from Northern Pulp’s Environmental Assessment of a new wastewater treatment system to replace the 50-year-old one at Boat Harbour next to the Pictou landing First Nation. The missing information is required to fulfil the “terms and conditions” of a focus report […]
Boat Harbour cleanup to be subjected to environmental review
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced yesterday it was launching an environmental assessment of the proposed cleanup of the Boat Harbour lagoons where tens of million of litres of daily effluent from the kraft pulp mill at Abercrombie Point have been stored, aerated, and released into the Northumberland Strait for 50 years. Tonnes of watery […]
Fixing freedom of information in NS (and jails), pulp mill politics, and plastics – all that, and more.
Morning File, Wednesday, January 16, 2019
I’m Joan Baxter, filling in for Tim today. News 1. Freedom of Information in Nova Scotia – the failure and the fix As Tim wrote, yesterday Nova Scotia privacy commissioner Catherine Tully and auditor general Michael Pickup released their reports on the FOIPOP website security failure. Both painted damning pictures of how the government handled […]
Northern Pulp, Scotsburn Lumber, and U.S. tariffs
Morning File, Tuesday, January 8, 2019
News 1. Northern Pulp, Scotsburn Lumber, and U.S. tariffs Last month, Scotsburn Lumber sent out a letter encouraging “all our employers, contractors, business owners, forest landowners and associated suppliers to call or write a letter to your local or elected official” to express support for Northern Pulp Mill and its efforts to continue operating after […]
Moncton’s bid to host the Francophone Games is a disaster
Morning File, Friday, December 14, 2018
News 1. Secret police commission meeting Yesterday, the Police Commission received an update on the street checks report in secret. No legal justification for the secrecy was spelled out beyond “legal matters,” which isn’t actually in any of the governing regulations for holding secret meetings. But even more remarkably, the Commission’s debate about whether to […]
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, […]