HALIFAX—Community concerns about pumping treated wastewater into the Northumberland Strait have not been allayed by Northern Pulp’s focus report and four stakeholder groups are asking the environment minister to reject the kraft pulp mill’s proposal.

The mayor of the town of Pictou, the chief of Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), a group of fishing industry organizations and the advocacy group Friends of the Northumberland Strait (FONS) all gathered in downtown Pictou, N.S. Tuesday to express their continued disapproval of the mill’s proposal for treating its industrial waste.

FONS president Jill Graham-Scanlan said each of the four groups, which jointly hosted the press conference, reviewed the focus report independently but came to same the conclusion: the project should not go forward.

Graham-Scanlan, speaking on the collective behalf of the groups, said the mill hadn’t fulfilled the requirements of the provincial environmental assessment, and what it had submitted was “not credible.”

The groups didn’t believe the mill’s claim that the project would have no major adverse human or environmental impacts.

The proposed project includes a 15-kilometre pipeline to carry effluent from Abercrombie Point to Caribou Harbour, crossing Pictou’s watershed along the way. Mayor Jim Ryan said that poses a risk to the municipal water supply and any risk is “unacceptable.”

Ryan voiced the same concerns when the plan was originally proposed last year; the mill made minor changes to the pipeline’s path with the submission of the focus report, but Ryan said they failed to eliminate the risk to Pictou’s drinking water.

Ryan was also concerned about the potential negative effects of air emissions and odours associated with the burning of sludge at the mill’s proposed new effluent treatment facility, and the potential for negative economic effects during the construction of the project.

Fisherman Colton Cameron said the mill underestimated the importance of Caribou Harbour – the proposed outfall location for the mill’s effluent – for marine life and the fishing industry. Cameron said the harbour is a spawning ground for herring and hosts populations of lobster and rock crab.

Cameron said construction and operation of the project, “will definitely have detrimental impacts to the marine ecosystems around it.”

In the company's focus report, a marine survey confirms there are rock crab in the areas of Caribou Harbour where the plant's diffusers would create a jet of expelled effluent.

It said based on testing and modelling there would be "no significant residual impacts" to marine water quality or on any fisheries or fish habitat as a result of the project.

That included the impact on the lobster population, which is one of the Northumberland Strait's key fisheries. The report said the outflow pipe's effect on the fishery would be "generally minor, localized and generally reversible.''

Cameron said he's not convinced.

"The reality is we fish heavily exactly where this effluent is going to be released," said Cameron.

He said a major concern is the poor tidal flushing characteristics of Caribou Harbour. Cameron said a premature leak in the pipeline would see the effluent effectively stuck in the harbour.

"They haven't done enough tidal studies to see this, but we the fishermen know what the tide does there and it's going to hold that water in for long periods of time."

Each of the groups at Tuesday’s press conference submitted its recommendation for rejection to Nova Scotia Environment Minister Gordon Wilson.

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Wilson has until Dec. 17 to announce a decision about the proposed effluent treatment facility — a decision that was stayed in March by then Environment Minister Margaret Miller. Miller said the owners of Paper Excellence, the corporation behind the Northern Pulp mill, had not given enough information in its original environmental assessment submission documents.

The mill submitted a focus report in October and, following legislated requirements for environmental assessments, the province invited public feedback on the report. The window for public submissions closed on Nov. 8 and Wilson promised, when the focus report was submitted, he would read each one before coming to a decision about the proposal.

In 2015, Premier Stephen McNeil wrote into law a deadline for the closure of Northern Pulp’s current effluent treatment facility in Boat Harbour. For more than 50 years, Pictou Landing First Nation has decried the pollution of that facility, which is immediately adjacent to their community.

The province bought the rights to Boat Harbour from PLFN in the 1960s and the land is slated to be returned to the first nation after the effluent treatment facility is decommissioned.

But the mill and forestry industries have been lobbying for an extension to the legislated deadline for Boat Harbour to keep the mill operating. Fears have been circulating in PLFN about the possibility of extending the deadline—fears that Chief Andrea Paul has shared with her community members in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, however, she said she said she had put those fears to rest.

"I'm saying that there will not be an extension,” she told reporters.

“I think the premier has been very clear on the timeline and what has been required from Northern Pulp.”

She added that based on the focus report Northern Pulp submitted to the province, she felt there was no way the project could be accepted.

“There were just too many things missing from the focus report.”

With files from Canadian Press

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