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N.S. to pay $6M toward Northern Pulp’s new wastewater treatment plant

August 23, 2018 – Nova Scotia newspaper The Chronicle Herald is reporting that the province of Nova Scotia is footing the bill for part of Northern Pulp’s new effluent treatment facility at Boat Harbour. 

Paper Excellence’s Northern Pulp mill has been at odds with the community of Picton, N.S. over the mill’s desire to pump wastewater into the Northumberland Strait instead of the lagoons it has been using at the facility’s current location near Pictou Landing First Nation reserve. 

The Chronicle Herald reports that a grant of more than $6 million was issued to Northern Pulp from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. The money is earmarked for designing the new Pictou County wastewater facility, which will undergo environmental assessment by another department of the government.

Despite the local fishermen’s association and environmental groups objecting that both financing and assessing the facility is a conflict of interest, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal maintains that the grant is an extension of the government’s ongoing discussions with Northern Pulp over who is responsible for paying for the new facility at Boat Harbour, the area’s effluent-affected former estuary-turned-freshwater lake. 

Read the full article here.