Pictou Landing First Nation Chief Andrea Paul said Wednesday that her band council won’t lift their blockade of a Northern Pulp effluent line break until they get a firm commitment from the province to clean up the Boat Harbour waste treatment site. (AARON BESWICK / Truro Bureau)
PICTOU LANDING — One of the largest industrial employers in Pictou County remains shut down.
The Pictou Landing First Nation is holding to its demand that it won’t allow Northern Pulp to reopen until they get a firm commitment from the province to remediate and clean up the Boat Harbour industrial waste treatment site.
The province, which owns the site, doesn’t yet know how much it would cost to clean up the waste that has poured into the former tidal lagoon from the kraft pulp mill since it opened in 1967.
“We’ve done a number of cost analyses on it, both looking at cleanup at various stages and various options,” said Premier Stephen McNeil on Thursday.
However, McNeil said his government needs an update on what is actually in Boat Harbour before it can estimate the plan for and cost of a cleanup.
That information, he said, might not come until later this year.
But until the province commits to the Pictou Landing First Nation band council with firm timelines for cleanup, Chief Andrea Paul is maintaining that she won’t lift her community’s blockade of the site of the broken effluent pipe.
Until that 3.6-kilometre pipe, which carries 70,000 cubic metres of untreated waste daily to Boat Harbour, is fixed, the mill can’t operate.
Mill spokesman David MacKenzie said the broken pipe was discovered on Tuesday at 7 a.m., and Environment Minister Randy Delorey said Thursday that effluent didn’t stop pouring from the pipe into a wetland near the First Nation until 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
But questions are being raised by local residents, concerned that the untreated waste, of which the mill has not verified the contents, may have been flowing for longer.
Pictou Landing resident Jonathan Beadle was at Boat Harbour on Monday evening at 7 p.m. and noticed, that while he could still see smoke coming from Northern Pulp at Abercrombie Point in the distance, there was no effluent flowing into the tidal lagoon.
“I thought it was strange,” said Beadle, who said he has made many trips over the years to Boat Harbour and is accustomed to seeing the liquid flow.
Mill spokesman David MacKenzie wouldn’t say Thursday how the mill discovered the break or how long they thought the effluent had been flowing.
A neighbour to the pipeline who didn’t want his name used told The Chronicle Herald Wednesday that he knows of six leaks in the pipeline since 1987. Of those, he discovered four and notified the mill while out on walks.
“You would see it on the surface of the water,” said the man. “I’d call them and it was really impressive because they would be here within minutes.”
He also didn’t know how the mill discovered this leak, but suspected it was a drop in pressure in the pipeline.
The mill’s 250 employees have not yet been laid off, according to MacKenzie.
Neither the premier nor Environment Minister Randy Delorey had plans to visit the site when asked on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Pictou County warden wants the provincial government and mill to sit down with the Pictou Landing band council.
“Every day that mill is down, is worrisome,” said Ronald Baillie.
“That said, the native and non-native people of Pictou Landing have not been treated fairly. I can see why they’re upset because they’ve been told many times before that things would happen and that hasn’t taken place.”
Both the premier and Delorey said Thursday they remain committed to cleaning up the Boat Harbour site, but will need time to get a grip on what needs to be done before an action plan can be created.
For his part, MacKenzie said mill officials are ready to sit down with government and the band council at any time.