Heavy reading
Nine days left for public input on Northern Pulp Focus Report
It’s about 4,000 pages and sits in binders on a table of the Pictou library.
Bound in those pages is information that could ultimately shape Pictou County’s economic and environmental future.
The window of time for members of the public to respond to Northern Pulp’s latest report on its proposed effluent treatment facility will be closed on Nov. 8.
“We get people coming in to look at it, I don’t think anyone has actually sat down and read the whole thing,” said Pictou librarian Jennifer Nelson. “It’s so big, and there’s so much to read through. It seems to be pretty heavy reading.”
The intent of the Focus Report is to address deficiencies that Nova Scotia Environment identified in Northern Pulp’s environmental assessment.
These deficiencies are laid by the government as ‘Terms of Reference’, and there are 11 of these terms of reference which required clarity and further study to address and submit, which Northern Pulp did on Oct. 2.
The public has had 37 days to read this Focus report. The public consultation period is normally 30 days, and Environment Minister Gordon Wilson has said that the extra week was to afford the public more time to review the report.
For the people who are reading it page by page, the extra seven days does not feel like much of an extension. Regardless, Wilson has maintained that the deadline for public consultation is the deadline.
Given the complexity of the documents and the importance to people in Pictou County, Friends of the Northumberland Strait president Jill Graham Scanlan says more time should be given.
“It’s around 4,000 pages, and we’ve had 37 days, that’s 108 pages per day of technical information that, not only do we have to read, we have to understand and analyze and then provide a response to the government,” said Scanlan. “I think the public ought to be given a reasonable amount of time to review the focus report so that they can respond in a meaningful way, and I don’t think that 30 or 37 days is reasonable given the circumstances.”
Scanlan says that she, along with lawyers from the law firm Ecojustice which has offices in Halifax, are among those reading the report and preparing a response.
Fishermen who work in the Northumberland Strait, and in particular those who work out of Caribou Harbour, have also been reading the Focus Report closely to see Northern Pulp’s assessment of the effects that the proposed plan would have on their livelihood.
The Focus Report says that the effluent outfall site, which is where the pipe will release effluent into the strait, was chosen “so as to minimize the impact in active fishing areas,” like around Caribou Harbour.
“We haven’t seen anything in it that makes us change our mind,” said Alan MacCarthy with the Northumberland Fishermen’s Association.
MacCarthy and other Caribou fishermen are saying that not enough research has been done on what, if any, effect effluent will have on marine life and are worried that when those studies are completed it may be too late.
“Every red mark you see on the plotter, every red mark is where I’ve fished lobsters,” said Caribou fisherman Gary Cameron pointing to a screen on his boat showing all the places off of Caribou where he has found lobster.
“If you’re a fisherman, the last thing you want is something like that out here,” he said.
Last September, fishermen have been requesting that studies compiled by Northern Pulp for the Focus Report be made available as soon as they were completed, but the studies were not made public until Oct. 2.