To understand what’s wrong in small town Nova Scotia, look to Pictou, where Northern Pulp breathes life into the local economy while emitting pollution vile enough to take your breath away. Pictou’s dilemma personifies the challenges facing so many Nova Scotia communities. There’s an environmental crisis in a sunset industry, threatening vital rural jobs after governments have already spent millions propping them up. Conservative MP Peter MacKay calls it “a very dire situation,” but says it’s a provincial problem. Environment Minister Randy Delorey says the province wants “to make a holistic decision and the right decision, whatever that means, about what to do at Abercrombie Point. Whether and how to keep the mill open and the forest economy alive has also become a question of which jobs are worth most in a region where there aren’t many options. That pulp is a stinky business is hardly a revelation, as anyone who has lived near a mill can tell you. Abercrombie Point has been operating, and emitting, since 1967. It used to smell like money. But pulp is an endangered industry in Atlantic Canada. Many mills have already closed because of shrinking markets. Those that remain are often propped up with government subsidies and cheap trees from Crown land. Despite all those expensive efforts, industry output fell 44 per cent between 2004 and 2012, according to the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. Some 15,000 jobs were lost, almost all of them in small towns and rural areas. This isn’t just another economic cycle to be suffered and survived. Forestry is in an existential battle against global economic, trade and environmental forces with no guarantees for its future. In Pictou, like mill towns elsewhere, people took the good money with the bad air as the price of an industry that provided generations of employment. Nowadays people aren’t so sure. An effluent spill into the harbour this spring followed by a hot summer of evil-smelling and possibly toxic emissions is putting the plant’s future at risk and adding to local economic insecurity. The mill’s nasty effluent pond at Boat Harbour still awaits cleanup after decades of inaction by successive governments and plant owners. Still, Northern Pulp has ready markets for its kraft pulp product and, according to Aaron Beswick’s story in The Chronicle Herald last week, has been operating at peak production. Like other mills, its impact is felt far beyond Pictou. Sawmills get their logs from the mill’s harvesting network and truckers haul raw trees, manufactured lumber and wood chips. Hundreds of Nova Scotians need the plant to stay open to survive. So the economic impact is undeniable. But outside the forest industry, it’s being questioned in a way that is unusual for our region. A local coalition is agitating for a monumental cleanup or closure of the plant and it is getting broad support. This time, it’s not just environmentalists complaining. Local businesses are split on the question of what to do about the aging mill. Things have gotten so bad at Northern Pulp that it is hurting tourism operators, restaurants and the like. People don’t want to eat, sleep and spend in places that smell bad. Even the reticent Paul Sobey, the most influential business figure anywhere near the mill, says it’s time to clean up the mess. His comments might represent a tipping point in the tension between the need for jobs and their costs beyond the plant gates. The Liberal government in Halifax plans to study and monitor and ponder and consider. In fact, it will do everything in its power to avoid actually doing anything about the problem. Politically, all the options right now look like losing ones. The only safe course for the province now is to dither until new equipment comes onstream next spring, which will remove a lot of the bad stuff from the emissions. And then hope to high heavens that it works. Dan Leger is a freelance journalist in Halifax.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 21:18:32 +0000
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