Another dead sturgeon has been found downstream of the Annapolis Tidal Turbine.
Meanwhile a promised review of whether the 20 megawatt turbine kills fish at population levels by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat remains in the planning process.
“The terms of reference for the review have been drafted,” said Debbie Buott-Matheson, spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in a written response.
“We have not yet set a date for a CSAS peer review meeting, but it is considered a priority going forward.”
That review was announced in January after a series of stories in The Chronicle Herald detailing how the turbine, which opened in a causeway crossing the Annapolis River in 1982, was never granted an exemption under the Fisheries Act to kill fish.
The facility generates power by trapping water as it enters a reservoir created by the causeway. When the tide rises it enters the reservoir through a sluice gate. That gate closes when the tide is high and the water is allowed out through the 7.4-metre-diameter turbine as the tide falls.
An environmental assessment was also not done on it before its completion.
“That thing has been a killer for more than 30 years,” said Robert Wiebe, who runs Annapolis Basin Charter Tours.
“Clamming, the striped bass population that is now genetically extinct, every year shad try to get up that river to lay their eggs and get killed on the way back down.”
Wiebe received the photo of the dead sturgeon from a friend who found it downstream from the turbine near a wharf on July 10.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada does not recognizethe Annapolis River as a place where sturgeonspawn. The species is listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife.
However, many of the large fish have been found chopped in half downstream from the turbine that is owned by Nova Scotia Power.
Matheson said that the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat review of existing research will “be used to determine if the facility is compliant with the Fisheries Act and Species at Risk Act.”