Three fishermen’s associations and the chief of the Pictou Landing First Nation are refusing to meet with representatives of Northern Pulp unless the company comes up with a new plan to treat their effluent.
The owners of the kraft pulp mill at Abercrombie Point plan to replace the existing Boat Harbour treatment facility with a new land-based one adjacent to the mill that will empty treated effluent into the Northumberland Strait via a one-metre-diameter pipe.
“We are adamant that there be no pipe emptying into the Northumberland Strait,” said Ronnie Heighton, a River John lobster fisherman and representative of the Gulf Nova Scotia Fleet Planning Board. “They are asking fishermen to take 100 per cent of the risk.”
Fishermen are concerned that the effluent — the system is designed to disperse up to 85,000 cubic metres a day — will damage the Northumberland Strait’s ecosystem.
Lobster is the primary fishery in the body of water that separates Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia. However, oyster fishermen have also raised their voices against the project.
The province built the effluent treatment facility— known as an aerated stabilization basin — in the Boat Harbour lagoon behind the Pictou Landing First Nation nearly four decades ago for the mill’s former owners.
After the pipe that goes from the mill to the lagoon ruptured in 2014, the province passed legislation mandating the closure of Boat Harbour by 2020.
The clock is ticking and the new plan is facing growing opposition from community leaders, fishermen and even the Pictou Landing First Nation.
“Ultimately there’s not another option,” said Kathy Cloutier, spokeswoman for Northern Pulp parent company Paper Excellence Corporation.
“A closed loop system is not feasible technically for a bleached kraft pulp mill — of the 10 (northern bleached kraft softwood pulp) mills in operation, they all either use what we currently or use what we are proposing to build.”