Province refuses to set hard emissions targets
Nova Scotia's Department of Environment is sticking to its guns on its refusal to provide hard emissions targets for Northern Pulp’s environmental assessment for a proposed mill transformation and replacement effluent treatment facility.
In announcing that it had sent the 1,300 submissions received on the environmental assessment’s draft terms of reference to Northern Pulp on Monday, the department included the rejoinder that hard targets would not be given to the company in a separate process known as an industrial approval to be completed after and if it passes an environmental assessment.
“If, and when, an environmental assessment is approved, companies then go through a second process, the industrial approval phase where emission targets — based on the environmental risks and mitigations identified during the environmental assessment process — are set,” reads the department's announcement.
Northern Pulp was asking for hard targets on air and effluent quality to be provided before it designs the proposed $350 million project. It has proposed the effluent portion of the targets be set the same as those in the new federal pulp and paper regulations currently working their way through Parliament.
The company filed a $450-million lawsuit against the province in December, alleging that government previously used the industrial approval process to attempt to force the mill’s closure by setting unachievable standards that would have also put it in violation of federal pulp and paper regulations.
“We want standards on air quality and water quality that are consistent with other jurisdictions and federal regulations,” said Stephen Cole, a lumber broker with H.C. Haynes that previously helped supply Northern Pulp.
“This company reached into every county of this province spending money in rural communities. We think it is reasonable to expect a little clarity on what is expected of them.”
Friends of the Northumberland Strait, which represents a coalition of concerned citizens, fishermen and First Nations members opposed to the project, meanwhile agrees with the Department of Environment’s position that targets can only be set after a detailed examination of the specific conditions of Pictou Harbour where Northern Pulp proposes to dump its treated effluent.
“In the last go-around, a receiving water study (for Pictou Harbour) was one of first things they did and they determined there wasn’t enough flushing within Pictou Harbour to allow the pipe to go into the harbour; that’s why chose ‘Point B’ (into the Northumberland Strait near Caribou),” group spokeswoman Jill GrahamScanlan told The Chronicle Herald in a recent interview.
“… Everything we know about Pictou Harbour, the depth, the flow, what is fished there, what it is used for, that it is enjoyed by the public, all tells us that there ought to be no pipe into Pictou Harbour.”
Graham-Scanlan said she couldn’t see her group accepting any regulatory bar set for the composition of treated effluent going into the Harbour.
Northern Pulp has 21 days to respond to the 1,300 submissions received from the public, after which the Department of Environment will have 14 days to issue a final terms of reference for the Class II environmental assessment process.
That process is anticipated to take two years to complete.