Northumberland Fisherman’s Association (NFA) President Ronnie Heighton is outraged that the NS Government has provided $6 million to Northern Pulp for design of their proposed new effluent treatment facility.

“This proposal puts our industry at risk,” says Heighton. “Our fishing organizations requested meetings with the provincial Minister of Environment for months and he would not meet with us. We asked for information from the department two months ago and received nothing. Now we find the government has funded the project to the tune of $6 million in the last year. This stinks worse than a barrel of rotten fish.”

“It’s beyond belief that the same government that is funding a plan to discharge 70-90 million litres of pulp effluent daily into our prime fishing grounds in the Northumberland Strait thinks they can conduct a fair and unbiased environmental assessment,” Heighton added.
Jill Graham-Scanlan, President of Friends of the Northumberland Strait (FONS) agrees. “If it wasn’t clear before, it’s certainly clear now,” Graham-Scanlan says. “The federal government needs to step up and take on the environmental assessment of this project, as we and 5,000 others have requested.”

Graham-Scanlan says the provincial government cannot expect citizens to trust their ability to conduct an unbiased environmental assessment when they are funders and potentially owners or partners in the project. “The livelihoods of thousands ...