Boat Harbour by the numbers

The story of Boat Harbour has most often been told in numbers. Big numbers, small numbers, ironic numbers. Here are just a few:

  • Number of years since Boat Harbour was turned into an industrial waste treatment lagoon: 42


  • Estimated amount of liquid pulp-mill waste that has gushed into Boat Harbour since then, in litres: 1,000,000,000,000


  • Number of premiers who have overseen the Boat Harbour file: 10


  • Number of government commitments to close boat harbour: At least 5


  • Number of those promises kept: 0 (so far)


  • Number of provincial cabinet ministers who participated in meetings with the band in November and December 2008: 3


  • Number of towns Nova Scotia Water Authority chair John Seaman Bates once proposed should put their human sewage into Boat Harbour: 5


  • Number that actually did: 0


  • Amount in 1966 dollars to build the pipeline to carry waste from the pulp mill to Boat Harbour: $2,000,000


  • Amount estimated by an Amherst engineer to transform Boat Harbour into a treatment lagoon: Up to about $100,000


  • Amount the Scott Paper company was to pay each year for waste treatment according to 1970 agreement with Nova Scotia: $100,000


  • Amount Nova Scotia paid the Pictou Landing band in 1966 as one-time compensation for loss of use of Boat Harbour: $60,000


  • Amount paid by the federal government to Pictou Landing band for failing to protect its interests when Boat Harbour became a waste lagoon: $35,000,000


  • Number of members of Pictou Landing First Nation: 565


  • Amount of the lump sum payment the band received under a 2001 memorandum of understanding with Kimberly Clark: $950,000.


  • Amount of each annual payment thereafter: $200,000


  • Number of hectares of land the band was to receive under its MOU with the paper mill: 4,000


  • Size in hectares of the large settling (sedimentation) lagoon at Boat Harbour: 142


  • Number of cubic metres of accumulated, toxic sediment estimated in 2003 by consultants Jacques Whitford to lie on the bottom of that lagoon: 70,000


  • Approximate number of Olympic-sized swimming pools to hold 70,000 cubic metres: 25


  • Average thickness of the sediment: 5 cm


  • Percentage of the toxic sediments the province thinks it can dredge out: 90


  • Estimated cost to dredge: $7,000,000 to $12,000,000


  • Percentage of responsibility the province has for pollution in Boat Harbour from 1967 to 1995: 100


  • Amount of the March 2009 loan to Northern Pulp by Nova Scotia to keep the mill in business: $15,000,000


  • Potential cost of replacement waste treatment facility for the pulp mill: $100,000,000