Fight over Northern Pulp Mill effluent pipe has reached a 'fever pitch,' says Nova Scotia MP
Fishermen concerned over Northern Pulp Mill's plans for new effluent treatment facility
A Nova Scotia MP is "deeply concerned" that tensions could escalate over a pulp mill's plan to release treated wastewater into the Northumberland Strait.
Fishermen and the Pictou Landing First Nation see it as a threat to both the environment and the businesses they have built. Last week, those tensions led to a confrontation on the water.
"Things have reached a fever pitch," Central Nova MP Sean Fraser told The Current's guest host Laura Lynch.
"I've spoken to people who have said, 'You know, I'm one step away from thinking about carrying the rifle onboard when I go out next time."
But Fraser has urged all parties in the dispute to "let our better angels prevail here and ensure that no one takes a drastic step and becomes violent over this."
The fishermen are concerned over the Northern Pulp Mill's plans for a new effluent treatment facility. But with more than 300 employees, the pulp mill itself is important to the local economy.
Fisherman Allan MacCarthy is a member of a working group of 3,000 fishermen opposed to the effluent pipe plan.
"The fishermen are totally frustrated," he told CBC News after the fleet confronted the survey ship last week about three kilometres from Caribou, N.S.
"I don't want to see anybody get hurt. I didn't want to see anybody go to jail for Northern Pulp. But that's the way fishermen are talking; that this is not going to end well."
To discuss the environmental and economic implications, Lynch was joined by:
- Joan Baxter, journalist and author of The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest
- Sean Fraser, MP for Central Nova, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this page.
With files from CBC News. Produced by Alison Masemann and Mary-Catherine McIntosh.