Pictou County university student helping raise awareness about importance of St. Mary’s River
Abbey Stroud compares Atlantic Gold’s plan to operate the Cochrane Hill Gold Mine to a “smash and grab.”
The Mount Allison University student, who lives in Pictou County, worked as a summer student this summer with MacGillivray Law. Part of her work has been helping raise awareness about efforts to protect the St. Mary’s River from the potential risks of mining.
“It’s really troubling to see these kinds of things happen over and over again — these large companies coming in and taking advantage of a small community and taking what little resources they have,” Stroud said.
The St. Mary’s River is 250 kilometres long and runs through Guysborough County, Antigonish County, Halifax Regional Municipality as well as parts of Pictou County and Colchester County.
For more than 40 years, a group of people concerned with protecting the river has been meeting and since the 2000s have been active with habitat restoration and monitoring.
But now members of the association believe their work is threatened by Atlantic Gold’s plan to operate the Cochrane Hill Gold Mine, an open-pit mine that would cover 600 acres of land in the area near the river.
One particular concern for the St. Mary’s River Association is the Archibald Lake
Wilderness area which would be used as a water source for the mine.
“That area is a part of the river that isn’t protected under the Lands and Forestry Act,” Stroud explains.
The mine’s initial plan was to operate from 2023 to 2029, although that could be delayed.
“It’s really just like a smash and grab operation to go in and take what they can,” Stroud said.
The benefits to the community are minimal, she said, and would be short-lived.
“It’s not really a very sustainable addition to the county,” she said.
And if something goes wrong, she said it could have lasting impacts on decades of work that have gone into protecting salmon and other wildlife.
“If there’s an effluent leak, it’s going to affect the whole province,” Stroud said.
She hopes that by raising awareness, they can get the public support needed to get the province to officially designate the Archibald Lake Wilderness area as a protected area — something that has been in talks for several years.
“We’re kind of getting to the deadline crunch here,” Stroud said. “Unless the Archibald Lake Wilderness area is protected, the mine will go into that area.”
Scott Beaver is president of the St. Mary’s River Association and said they’ve spent millions on habitat work along the river to help bring back the Atlantic Salmon population.
So it came as a shock to the group when they found out about the Cochrane Hill Gold Mine plans around 2018.
He’s particularly concerned about the tailings management facility which affects McKeen’s Brook a tributary of the river.
When he first met with Atlantic Gold about their plan, he said they told him there was no salmon in that water. But he was able to hire a film crew that captured underwater footage of salmon spawning there.
If the 70-metre-high wall around the tailings pond that’s planned as part of the project were to give out, he said it would have a terrible impact on the ecosystem.
He hopes that people will realize what’s happening and that government will protect the area before it’s too late.