A proposal to lay a 10-kilometer-long pipe into the Northumberland Strait has Canada’s seafood sector worried about its potential impact on the marine environment.
The proposed pipe would deliver 70 million liters of treated effluent from the Northern Pulp plant in Abercombie Point (across the harbor from Pictou, Nova Scotia) directly into the Northumberland Strait. The company has said the treated effluent is safe and won’t harm the environment or fisheries, and the Province of Nova Scotia is offering to perform an environmental study, but according to those in the regional fishery and belonging to the area’s First Nations, neither are adequate responses.
Since 1967, Northern Pulp has been directing plant effluent to an enclosed treatment area, Boat Harbour, which borders the Pictou Landing First Nation lands. The band and company have been at odds for many years about the negative impacts of this treatment area. The idea that what has been an unpleasant mess on land would be directed to the water has raised concerns from the First Nations, local municipalities, fishermen and seafood companies in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and the premier of Prince Edward Island. Islanders are also concerned effluent could harm their oyster and mussel farms as well as other catches like quahogs and clams.
PEI Premier Wade MacLauchlan has spoken to Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil about the proposed pipe. MacLauchlan has expressed concern that the pipe could damage Canada’s brand and international reputation for supply top-quality, fresh seafood.
While industry groups including the Lobster Council of Canada expressed their own concerns to provincial and federal environment ministers since December 2017, the depth of public opposition was expressed on Friday, 6 July, when more than 1,000 people, supported by 100 fishing boats from three provinces, gathered on the Pictou harborfront to protest the pipe. Boats and people carried signs reading “No Pipe.”
he Nova Scotia premier is faced with the decision of either backing the establishment of 300 jobs provided by the mill, while facing resistance to the project from many of the 40,000 people who work across Canada on land and at sea in the lobster sector.
Beyond the potential impact on the lobster fishery is the larger concern for the Canadian seafood brand. Canada’s lobster exports are worth in excess of CAN 2 billion (USD 1.5 billion, EUR 1.3 billion) annually, and the country’s total seafood exports are valued at more than CAD 5 billion (USD 3.8 billion, EUR 3.2 billion).
Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, told SeafoodSource the project “would impact our seafood image.”
“We’ve written to the environment minister and copied it to all the other environment ministers and made the case that pumping effluent into the Strait doesn’t match up with the Nova Scotia branding position on seafood. Nor does it match up with our Canadian lobster branding positioning on the pristine waters that we take product out of to supply the world. So we find it problematic and we hope they can find another solution,” he said.
Canadian politicians should be ready to speak to what they feel that damage to the brand will mean, Irvine said.
“We have to protest as much as we can, but we also have to remember we may have to market our lobster with this in place,” he said. “We see that there could be damage to it, but practically speaking we have to be prepared for it if it does happen. It’s a rock and a hard place for everybody.”
The Maritime Fishermen’s Union, which represents 1,200 independent in-shor owner-operator fishermen in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, opposes the pipe.
“The economies of three provinces depend on fishery,” MFU staffer Ruth Inniss told SeafoodSource. “World markets expect fish from clean and environmentally sustainable waters so markets depend on us to provide that.”
The MFU’s position is not to support friction or division in communities, however, it believes “there is technology available rather than flushing [effluent] into unique marine eco systems.”
Stewart Lamont, managing director of Tangier Lobster Sales, attended the “No Pipe” protest. He said he and and a colleague drove across the province to attend.
“We encountered a surprising number of people that we knew,” Lamont said. “People collectively now know what we have to lose.”
Lamont characterized the concept of placing a pipe into the Strait as “the most mind-boggling public policy decision in my lifetime.”
“Anything that we do to compromise our ocean waters is playing with fire in an international marketplace,” he said. “Europe is the leader on environmental issues and they could organize a boycott against Nova Scotia in a heartbeat.”
Lamont said he believes the No Pipe event was just the beginning of a vigorous protest campaign.
Photo courtesy of Meg Hodges/Twitter
