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There will be no federal environmental assessment of Northern Pulp’s proposed effluent treatment facility.

Jonathan Wilkinson announced his decision to not designate the facility for the longer federal assessment Monday afternoon.

“ I am very much aware of concerns that have been raised related to the potential for adverse impacts from the project on marine life including a number of important questions raised by federal departments,” said the federal environment minister in a written statement.

“It is my expectation that outstanding questions and information gaps will be answered through the provincial environmental assessment process. Should these issues not be sufficiently dealt with through the provincial process, I remain committed to ensuring that they are thoroughly understood and addressed through federal regulatory processes.”

The announcement came a day before provincial environment minister Gordon Wilson is set to announce whether to allow Northern Pulp’s controversial plan to treat up 85 million litres of effluent daily and pump it into the Northumberland Strait beside Caribou.

And it comes despite recent rulings by both the Nova Scotia Supreme Court and Court of Appeal that included warnings that, as both a funder and regulator of the project, the provincial government’s impartiality is questionable.

“It would essentially boil down to the Crown (wearing one hat) being called upon to determine whether a project which the Crown (wearing another hat) has funded, passes muster,” wrote Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Timothy Gabriel in a 2018 decision.

“This will do nothing to assuage whatever cynicism has been engendered in the past by the already significant environmental impact which has been visited upon Treaty lands and environs by the mill and its facilities to date."

That quote also found its way into a recommendation by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to then federal environment minister Catherine McKenna last March. The recommendation, obtained by the Chronicle Herald via a Freedom of Information Request, from the arms length federal body was largely blacked out.

The recommendation pointed to the agency having received 3,200 requests from private citizens, First Nations organizations and fisheries groups in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island requesting the project undergo a federal assessment.

Whatever the recommendation was (its conclusion was redacted) then-minister McKenna didn’t act on it.

She later asked for a new recommendation (also not public) under a changed Environmental Assessment Act and then delayed any decision on it until after the October federal election.

“To me, he’s doing some double talk,” said Allan MacCarthy of the Northumberland Fishermen’s Association.

“He’s saying he’s in charge of protecting oceans and fish stocks and admitting this could be a hazard. Five federal departments have spoken up and said there could be harm caused and yet he’s not doing a federal assessment.”

MacCarthy’s association met the former Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency a year and a half ago and provided input on why they thought the project’s fate shouldn’t be in the hands of the provincial government — a perceived conflict of interest was among their concerns.

The province is already planning on spending upwards of $200 million cleaning up the existing effluent treatment facility at Boat Harbour. It is also locked in negotiations with the mill over how much to compensate it for forcing its closure on Jan. 31, 2020, a decade before the expiry of the mill’s lease to the government-owned facility. A Chronicle Herald freedom of information request showed those negotiations were based in part on the cost of the proposed new facility — north of $100 million — which led to accusations that the province will in effect be not only cleaning up the mill’s historical pollution but paying for the new facility.

Wilkinson did not address questions around conflict of interest in his written statement.

But he did point to additional federal requirements the proposed new facility would have to abide by.

Those include the Fisheries Act, federal pulp and paper effluent regulations, the migratory bird convention, Species at Risk Act, permission to use the seabed from Public Services and Procurement Canada and Transport Canada’s Navigable Waters Act.

“A federal impact assessment is designed for the largest most complex projects where there is significant environmental risk in areas of federal jurisdiction,” said Wilkinson.

“A federal impact assessment is not the right tool for every type of project. Under CEAA 2012 and the Impact Assessment Act, pulp and paper mills are not designated projects. As such, these types of projects have not undergone federal environmental assessments.”

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