Gypsum Extenion Approved

By Stu Ducklow

The Hants Journal

NovaNewsNow.com

The controversial Fundy Gypsum mine extension at Miller’s Creek has been approved by the Department of the Environment, but with some conditions.

Size of the extension will be limited to about 105 hectares, about one-third the area proposed by the company, roughly equivalent to a 20-year active mining life.

Other conditions include: • establishing a community liaison committee • protecting a 46-hectare conservation area • extensive monitoring of surface and groundwater • developing a wetland compensation and land reclamation plan • monitoring and protecting rare plants • gathering information on bats in the area and protecting their habitat.

Mike Bishop, Candian Gypsum Co. plant manager, said he was pleased with the decision. “It's a bit smaller than what was originally proposed, but that is within a 20-year time frame and a lot of things can happen over 20 years. So we're still very happy with the results,” he said Thursday.

Others aren’t so happy. “If we couldn’t have it totally refused, this is better than a straight approval,” said Shirley Pineo, councilor for the Avondale-Burlington area of the Municipality of West Hants. “People are really worried about their water.” “I’ve got more questions than answers,” she said Friday as she began to plow through the decision, posted on the department’s web site. “Money must be put on deposit for reclamation, but how much? Turning holes [from mining] into ponds, that’s not good enough.”

She hopes the new Community Liaison Committee, one of the conditions of approval, will ease the fears of local residents. “I hope to heavens that Raymond Parker will be on that committee.”

Parker, longtime opponent of the mine expansion, remains opposed to the decision. “It’s unbelievable that conditional approval was granted without a full environmental assessment,” he said Friday.

A member of the 200-strong Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society, Parker says the environmental assessment produced by the company is flawed. “They claimed they could dig up the middle of our watershed and not cause any environmental effects.”

He says the company’s assessment: • Failed to delineate wetlands, as asked by the previous MacDonald government, which requested the report. “We only had a month but we found wetlands that were not on the report,” says Parker. • Denied there was bat hibernaculum on the site though members of the society were able to find one area with significant bat popoulation. • Claims one area was devoid of fish habitat though his group’s consulting firm, Water Research Associates, found good fish habitat.

He said that when the report was tabled, 87 of the 95 responses to it were either outright opposed or called for a full environmental assessment.

Parker said the area’s karst environment (land dominated by sinkholes, fissures, towers and ridges produced by the decay of underlying limestone) has been noted for its great biodiversity. It is home to two species of lady’s-slipper and several other rare plants, rich amphibian and reptile populations and at least one area where bats hibernate over winter.

The Avon Peninsula is surrounded by three rivers and the mine extension is in the headwaters where swamps and streams feed the Avon, Kennetcook and St. Croix Rivers.

But Mike Bishop stoutly defends his company and its environmental record.

He says the local mine has planed more than 100,000 trees in cooperation with the local scouting movement and has an agreement with Ducks Unlimited to maintain duck habitat in three areas, such as Meadow Pond.

After mining, water is allowed to seep into the canyons left behind and the cliff-like edges are rounded off to prevent erosion and create a safer environment. The area is then seeded. Water takes the level of the water table and becomes a spring-fed pool. Though the pools aren’t emptied by streams, water gets out through faults, said Bishop. In some cases it’s pumped out to prevent storm flooding.

Other quarries have become golf courses or suburbs after they’ve been used up, he says. For example, a former company mine in Cheverie, NB, is now a golf course.