Let’s count the benefits of a mill closure

The government has promised that effluent from the Northern Pulp mill will cease pouring into Boat Harbour at the end of January. That is the law. Since there is no waste treatment plant ready to deal with the toxic effluent, the pulp mill has to close as well. This would lead to many benefits.

The closure would:

• keep the promise to the First Nation people who have been betrayed so often, furthering reconciliation;

• greatly reduce the amount of forest clearcutting and allow for selection cutting which would hire many woodworkers and allow for the wood harvested to be used for high-end flooring, furniture and lumber. (One board of oak can bring in $60.) Right now the forests are being clearcut at an alarming rate in anticipation of the Lahey report’s implementation;

• keep the pollution from the mill from destroying the air and the water (Northern Pulp produces 13 times more air pollution than the Irving mill in Saint John). This would also reduce health-care spending;

• climate change is the No. 1 issue on all voters’ minds. It would be mitigated by the closure of the mill and the resultant preservation of the forests which act as a carbon sink .... and voters would be pleased;

• allow the fishermen to harvest healthy lobster and fish;

• allow the government to retrain many of the mill workers to work in the needed alternative energy industry (38,000 jobs could be created there) and many jobs in the high-end forestry and woodworking industry;

• increase ecotourism and tourism in Pictou County, providing more jobs;

• keep the profit from the mill (money made from our forests) in Nova Scotia, instead of sending it to Indonesia;

• this government would gain a lot of credit all over the world if it made this decision to be progressive instead of the same old catering to big business.

Spending more money on the mill is throwing good money after bad. The mill is 52 years old, more than twice its industrial life span. It needs to close. Wendy Scott, Halifax, retired ecotourism operator