No risk is acceptable: Pictou mayor
PICTOU — If Pictou County residents expected a definitive answer to the future of Northern Pulp Tuesday, they didn’t get it.
Pictou Mayor Jim Ryan was happy to hear concerns about the pipeline going through his town’s watershed have been heard, as well as concerns about how it could affect water and air around the town, but he’s concerned that the problem has just been pushed down the road.
“I would say overall it’s good that they recognize that the towns concerns, but I’m not sure what the benefit will be by moving (the deadline).”
As far as the town is concerned, he said, no risk is acceptable.
“Our position was pretty specific — no risk,” Ryan said. “What does no risk look like? It means, don’t put it through there, really. That’s what no risk means to me.”
Pictou Landing First Nation Chief Andrea Paul has said she would not support an extension to the Boat Harbour Act that would allow Northern Pulp to keep operating past next month.
“Our position has been that the Boat Harbour Act was specifically promised to PLFN, to that community, to move towards remediation of the Boat Harbour area,” Ryan said. “I think it’s not up to us as a town to step in and involve ourselves in that discussion.”
Ecojustice and Friends of the Northumberland Strait issued a statement shortly after the announcement that they are relieved and pleased that a full Environmental Assessment Report for the project has been ordered.
“We are very pleased that the minister of environment recognized that Northern Pulp has not provided the science to show that this project can be built and operated without significant harm,” said James Gunvaldsen Klaassen, a lawyer with Ecojustice.
Submissions from the two groups included expert opinions pointing to significant risks of the project, flaws in Northern Pulp’s modeling and factual errors, he said.
The news release from Friends of the Northumberland Strait said that submissions from fisheries organizations and Pictou Landing First Nation provided strong scientific evidence that the project would harm the environment.
“Northern Pulp has twice produced unreliable and inaccurate documents, although they had five years to gather information,” said Jill Graham-Scanlan, President of FONS. “We believe the minister had enough evidence to reject the proposal now, but we are ready to present him with the science a third time. We believe that a full environmental assessment report will prove that Northern Pulp’s proposal would cause significant environmental harm.”