Project violates Fisheries Act: opponents
HALIFAX, N.S. – A group ardently opposed to the Alton Gas project say they have acquired federal Environment Department documents that show the project violates federal Fisheries Act regulations.
Robin Tress, a climate and social justice campaigner for the Council of Canadians, said documents obtained from freedom of information requests backs up “concerns that the project would have serious impacts on the Shubenacadie River, the fish within it and the (Mi’kmaq) treaties.”
The controversial solution mining project, in the works for about a dozen years, would have Alton Gas, a subsidiary of Altagas, draw nearly 10,000 cubic metres of water daily from the Shubenacadie River estuary at Fort Ellis, Colchester County, piping it to a cavern site off Brentwood Road, near Alton. There, the water would be pumped nearly 1,000 metres underground to flush out salt to create two natural gas storage caverns.
The brine created by the salt dissolution would then be pumped back to a mixing pond at the estuary before being released into the river system, a gradual discharge of 1.3 million cubic metres of salt over a two- to three-year period.
Among the documents produced Tuesday by the group opposed to the project is a May 2016 communication filed by Paula Jackman, a toxicology lab supervisor with the federal Environment Department, that concludes “for a short period of time any fish in this mixing zone may be exposed to elevated salinity levels above those considered safe for marine and estuarine organisms.”
Jackman stated that “high salinity such as those expected in the brine are considered deleterious substances according to the Fisheries Act.”
Partners Dale Poulette and Rachael Greenland-smith have long opposed the project and filed more than 20 freedom of information requests to obtain documents from various federal and provincial government departments.
“We have proven the brine, which Alton Gas holds a provincial industrial approval to release into the Shubenacadie River, would cause serious harm to fish and fish habitat,” Greenland-smith said at a news conference held at the Shubenacadie Canal Commission building in Dartmouth.
She said concerns have been raised by Nova Scotia Environment and the federal Fisheries and Environment departments since the project’s inception.
“The problem is that these concerns were never addressed properly, leading to Alton Gas receiving industrial approval for a project that doesn’t meet basic environmental protection laws,” Greenland-smith said.
She said the 260 parts salt per a thousand parts of water, which is permitted under the 2016 provincial industrial approval for the brining operation, meets the criteria of a deleterious substance.
“This will cause harm to fish and fish habitat, thus affecting the rights of Mi’kmaw people to exercise their treaty rights and it would cause serious harm to the Shubenacadie River and species at risk that frequent that water.”
A second communication from Shawn Sanson of the federal Environment Department dated February 2018 suggested pre-emptive measures to prevent the release of a deleterious substance into the river system but the measures suggested were redacted in the exchange obtained through a freedom of information request.
Poulette said a misconception exists that only salt would be dumped into the river as part of the brine.
“We know for a fact through the toxicology reports that it is not just salt,” Poulette said. The brine would contain heavy metals, trace minerals, arsenic “and a bunch of chemicals that we can’t even pronounce,” he said.
Alton spokeswoman Lori Maclean said the project review process resulted in both a provincial environmental assessment approval and an industrial approval and that the federal Environment Department will further regulate the release of brine.
“With ongoing direction from regulators regarding their expectations, we have continued to evaluate and improve the brine release process to address stakeholder concerns,” Maclean said.
“To date, the brining process used to build the natural gas storage caverns has not started and no brine has been released into the Shubenacadie River. This work will not begin until all regulatory conditions have been satisfied.”
Tress said that when Environment Canada learned of the Fisheries Act violations, instead of holding the company accountable, it decided to lower the regulatory bar.
“Last year, we saw Environment Canada begin the process of creating new regulations under the Fisheries Act that apply exclusively to Alton and will benefit this project,” Tress said.
“Nothing about this project has changed, nothing about the brine has changed and now what they are trying to do is change the rules so it no longer violates the Fisheries Act. You can change the law but you can’t change the fact that the substance is harmful to fish.”
Tress and the group are pushing the provincial government to “suspend all permits associated with Alton Gas because we know that the company is not in compliance with those permits.”