Protesters claim turbine violates Fisheries Act
Is the Annapolis Tidal Generating Station killing a lot of fish?
The protesters waving placards on the causeway crossing the Annapolis River on Wednesday and Thursday claim that it does.
Scientists and stakeholders meeting over the same period at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography were attempting to answer the same question.
But even as The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat was performing its review of available data, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Nova Scotia Power (NSPI) may already know whether the turbine is in violation of the Fisheries Act.
According to correspondence obtained via a freedom of information request between high level staff at both the federal regulator and the turbine’s owner, both already know it kills fish.
“I can’t recall exactly how you were referencing it in your media lines but given the statement from the report below, this shouldn’t be considered as a regulatory tool which either permits or allows NSPI to kill less than five sturgeon per year,” reads an email sent by fisheries protection program manager Mark Mclean to Nova Scotia Power’s director of environmental service Terry Toner.
“You could state that the report indicates that the mortality from the facility is low. However, only regulator tools such as Letters of Advice, Fisheries Act Authorizations or (Species at Risk Act) permits can provide proponents with DFO’S authority to undertake activities which result in the death of fish.”
The report referenced in the exchange isn’t included in full, but a portion of it pasted into the email body states that while there is sturgeon mortality — it is low.
In the email, Mclean is advising Toner that a report noting mortality is low doesn’t count as permission from Fisheries and Oceans Canada for the turbine to kill sturgeon.
The timing of the exchange is also noteworthy — it occurred in November 2017, just days after The Chronicle Herald revealed that, despite previous public statements to the contrary, Nova Scotia Power had received and acknowledged reports of sturgeon chopped in half down river from its 20-megawatt tidal turbine.
Those reports had never been forwarded to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Power has never been granted a ministerial dispensation from Section 35 of the Fisheries Act, which prohibits “the carrying on of a work, undertaking or activity that results in serious harm to fish that are part of or support a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery.”
Bay of Fundy sturgeon are listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
But it’s not just sturgeon that the turbine has been shown to kill.
“There is an association between the decline in the Annapolis River Striped Bass population, the construction of the Annapolis Royal Causeway in 1960, and the subsequent construction of the Annapolis Tidal Station starting in 1980,” reads a 2014 Fisheries and Oceans report on the recovery potential of the Bay of Fundy striped bass population.
The request for the review filed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada with the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat notes that “the turbine is currently considered as a threat to the Annapolis population of striped bass.”
In 2012, the same body that listed sturgeon as threatened listed the Bay of Fundy striped bass population as endangered.
“What’s coming of it is that DFO is going to come to the realization that they can’t protect this (turbine) forever,” said Robert Wiebe, one of the protest’s organizers and owner of Annapolis Basin Charter Tours.
“They’ve been treating it like a golden calf and if they continue to do that, they will find themselves out on a limb.”
Nova Scotia Power’s turbine that creates electricity by allowing water to pass through a sluice gate as the tide rises outside a dam across the Annapolis river, then back through a turbine as the tide lowers, has never been granted an exemption under the Fisheries Act to kill fish.
According to the request to Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat for the current review, its findings will be used by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to help determine “which next steps can be taken in order for the proponent to continue to operate the facility in a way that is in compliance with the (Fisheries Act) and (Species At Risk Act).”
Darren Porter, who is taking part in the current review, doesn’t expect it to make any difference to the operation of the tidal turbine.
“They’re knowingly allowing it to run in violation of the Fisheries Act today and the same people who are in the same offices will make the same decisions tomorrow,” said Porter.
“All we’re doing with this review is providing those people our assessment of the science done to date.”
Porter said much of the discussion inside the meeting was about how large an effect the mortality had on the varied species.
A similar review of scientific data around fish mortality at the power plant was done by Fisheries and Oceans nearly three decades ago.
The minutes for the June 28, 1989, review state that the power plant had operated on an experimental basis since a 1984 environmental impact assessment produced by Martec Ltd. that “assumed a low mortality for fish passing through the turbine and the formal environmental review ended at this stage.”
The minutes then cite two subsequent studies that estimated it killed 12 to 20 per cent of shad that passed through the turbine as the tide lowered.
“… In summary, Nova Scotia Power Corporation has spent in excess of $650,000 in studies at Annapolis and it is felt that future funding should be spent in avoiding mortality rather than determining the exact numbers of fish killed at the plant,” say the minutes.