Pictou Landing First Nation seeks judicial review of Boat Harbour cleanup plan

CBC

01-03-2025

'I just want to make sure it's done the right way,' says chief
Pictou Landing First Nation has asked the Federal Court to overturn Ottawa's approval of a plan to store contaminated sludge from Boat Harbour in an enclosed structure on nearby land.
The Mi'kmaw community in northern Nova Scotia has filed for a judicial review of the decision from federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Guilbeault said last month that the proposed remediation of Boat Harbour, which for decades received wastewater from a kraft paper mill, "is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects."
In a submission to the Federal Court this week, Pictou Landing First Nation argued Guilbeault's decision was "patently unreasonable."
The submission mentions insufficient consultation, interference with treaty rights and violations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, among other grounds.
Supporting documents have not yet been filed with the court.
Image | The Northern Pulp mill in Abercrombie Point, N.S.
Caption: The Northern Pulp mill in Abercrombie Point, N.S., viewed from Pictou, N.S., Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, a few months before it closed. (Robert Short/CBC)
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The respondents are the federal environment minister and Build Nova Scotia, the provincial Crown corporation that's in charge of the Boat Harbour cleanup project. Neither party has yet filed a response. Nova Scotia Public Works Minister Fred Tilley, who oversees Build Nova Scotia, declined to comment on the case while it's before the courts.
'We can't really heal'
Guilbeault's approval incorporated several conditions, including the creation of an advisory committee to examine alternative locations for storing the sludge. But he stopped short of mandating that an alternative site be found. Build Nova Scotia would be allowed to use the existing containment cell, as planned, and then move the sludge again if an "economically feasible" alternative is found.
Pictou Landing Chief Tamara Young said she's worried that if the containment cell is used at all, her community will never be rid of the sludge.
"I just want to make sure it's done the right way," she said in an interview.
Young said her community lacks trust in government because of the history of Boat Harbour. Pictou Landing First Nation agreed to sell the former tidal estuary to the province in the 1960s so it could be used to treat effluent from the mill at Abercrombie Point, N.S., that was most recently known as the Northern Pulp mill.
Community members have said they were duped into the deal with false assurances that the effluent wouldn't be harmful, but they soon noticed major environmental changes.
"We can't really heal as a community if we keep that containment cell there," Young said.
In earlier stages of planning the remediation, Build Nova Scotia said one alternative was to send the sludge to a facility outside the province, but ruled it cost-prohibitive because of the huge volume of sludge that would have to be hauled away by transport trucks.
Young said the community is pushing for storage of the sludge on the site of the now-shuttered pulp mill, which would overcome the hurdle of long-distance transportation. She said she's eager for the committee that Guilbeault ordered to get to work so that option can be fully investigated.