Province to help cover shutdown costs

ABERCROMBIE, N.S. — The provincial government is giving up to $10 million to Paper Excellence to cover about half the cost of shutting down the Boat Harbour treatment facility.

The Northern Pulp mill in Abercrombie Point, Pictou County closed in January after the province said it would not offer an extension to the Boat Harbour Act, and all effluent stopped flowing to the site this spring.

The provincial government, which owns the Boat Harbour treatment facility and had leased it to Northern Pulp, also owns the pipe that runs from the mill to Boat Harbour and is funding work to decommission the pipe along with other key elements of the environmental cleanup, it stated in a news release this week. The government funding will pay for the removal of the leachate and decommissioning of the pipes, ditches, and settling and aeration basins on the site.

“We are committed to seeing the cleanup is done right, and through the funding agreement, we will hold the company accountable to make sure it does,” Premier Stephen McNeil said in the release.

“Completing this work is an important part of the process to return Boat Harbour — A'se'k — to its original state for the people of Pictou Landing First Nation and surrounding communities.”

The company's work plan is in line with orders from the environment minister and needs to be completed before Nova Scotia Lands can remediate Boat Harbour in 2021.

Paper Excellence, the parent company of Northern Pulp, has estimated the total shutdown process will cost about $20 million. The shutdown work is expected to be completed by June 30, 2021. The company will provide reports to the province and all costs will be validated by a third party, Grant Thornton.

Nova Scotia Lands will be responsible for remediating the Boat Harbour basin and plans to restore it to a tidal estuary. Pilot-scale testing for that has finished and the project is undergoing a federal environmental assessment.

“The remediation project proposal is still going through the environmental approval process,” confirmed Peter McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. “We submitted our environmental impact statement to Impact Assessment Agency of Canada for approval and we expect a decision from the federal agency in early to mid-2021.”