Closed-Door Negotiations Underway to End Boat Harbour Controversy
The aeration lagoon next to the Boat Harbour treatment facility. Photo: John Packman
Crucial negotiations are under way that could decide the future of a pulp mill in Pictou County, and lead to Nova Scotia finally making amends for a toxic mess it unleashed on the area’s residents more than 40 years ago. At stake are the more than 1,200 jobs that rely on the mill, and a cleanup and restoration that could cost more than $100 million.
“There are huge implications for everyone,” Premier Rodney MacDonald said after a cabinet meeting April 23.
A six-week investigation by journalism students at the University of King’s College reveals for the first time the negotiations to close the lagoon that treats millions of litres of wastewater from the mill every day. The Pictou Landing First Nation, backed by the province’s Mi’kmaq chiefs, has bluntly told the province it wants the Boat Harbour lagoon, located right beside the reserve, shut down and the waste put somewhere else.
The students’ investigation also reveals in unprecedented detail the behind-the-scenes dealings that led to the fateful decision in the 1960s by the Nova Scotia Water Authority to use an idyllic coastal inlet to treat industrial waste. And it chronicles decades of broken promises from one government after another.
While this story has been unfolding for years, what may be its final chapter is being written right now.
In December 2008, the province made the latest of many promises to clean up Boat Harbour, saying it would go along with the band’s wishes to shut it down completely. This is farther than the province has ever gone. It is now trying to negotiate a deal with the first nation and persuade it that this promise will be kept. It also wants to find a way for the mill’s current owner, Northern Pulp Nova Scotia Corporation, to continue operating. The province recently gave the mill a $15 million loan to keep it going through tough economic times.
“Obviously, the first goal is to find a solution to the current situation, so that the good people of Pictou Landing (First Nation) would not have to put up with this any longer, put up with the treatment plant and the effluent any longer,” said Brooke Taylor. He took over as minister of transportation and infrastructure renewal in January 2009 and inherited the Boat Harbour file. “The long term goal is to find a solution that is to their satisfaction.”
Premier MacDonald echoed his minister. “At the end of the day I want to see the company continue because it’s an important employer but I also want to see and ensure we do the right thing environmentally and the company fulfills its obligations in respect to that.”
The province also has many obligations. It is responsible for everything dumped into Boat Harbour prior to a 1995 agreement that handed over operation of the treatment plant to the mill. That means that at some point, Nova Scotians will have to clean it up. While the waste is much cleaner than it once was, some of the most toxic chemicals known to science are embedded in the fine sediments at the bottom of the 142-hectare settling lagoon. Just dredging them out will cost Nova Scotia taxpayers $7 to $12 million. A replacement treatment plant is estimated at $100 million.
The current negotiations involve the first nation, the province and mill owner Northern Pulp. The talks have their roots in events dating back almost a decade, to 2001, when the band signed a memorandum of understanding with the mill, on the basis that use of the largest part of Boat Harbour, a 142 hectare settling lagoon, would be phased out by 2005.
According to the band’s lawyer, Brian Hebert, that MOU included payments to the band of $200,000 a year, increasing to $220,000 in 2008. There was also a lump-sum payment of almost $1 million. As well, 4,000 hectares of paper company land was also supposed to be transferred to the band. Discussions over the land transfer continue today.