PICTOU – Locals concerned about emissions from Northern Pulp are pleased to see progress in their efforts to attract attention to their cause.
Paul Gregory and Matt Gunning, who both feel the mill has negatively affected their family’s health, came up with the idea of a Facebook group called “Clean up the Pictou County Pulp Mill,” which launched in July and has since gained more than 2,200 members along with the attention of the provincial government and well-known activist Erin Brockovich.
The aim of the group is to clean up the mill’s emissions, not close it down, and to have a platform for discussion about living around the mill and the wastewater treatment system at Boat Harbour.
The number of health stories posted has the group advocating for a full epidemiological study of the region and what role, if any, the mill has and is playing in Pictou County residents’ health.
The group also launched an online petition at change.org titled “Premier Darrell Dexter: Clean up the Pictou County Pulp Mill,” which gained more than 800 electronic signatures in less than a day.
The petition asks the provincial government to implement independent monitoring of Northern Pulp’s air, water and land emissions, scientific evidence that the sludge from effluent settling ponds is safe for burning and land spreading, more active oversight into Northern Pulp’s compliance with regulations and accountability.
Gregory said he and Gunning had a meeting with local MLA Charlie Parker about the group’s concerns Monday.
“We’re not going to be a bunch of environmentalists coming in there and screaming, we’re professionals,” he said. “We just wanted to get that dialogue going.”
Gregory said the meeting went well and three more meetings will happen including one with Nova Scotia Environment and the key members of the Facebook group, one with Northern Pulp and the group and one with all three players arranged by Parker in the coming weeks.
Along with grabbing the attention of the province, the members of the Facebook group have also garnered the interest of famous American activist Erin Brockovich.
Brockovich reports on her website that she is receiving high numbers of inquiries from people in Pictou County who are concerned that the excessive rate of cancer and respiratory illness in their community could be attributable to environmental contamination caused by the emissions from Northern Pulp.
“I am in discussions with my environmental engineer team about this issue and we will respond once we have more knowledge,” Brockovich stated on the website.
Gregory encouraged members of the Facebook group to write to Brockovich, asking her to consider helping them. He said he wanted to bring in someone who can see the big picture and has experience dealing with this type of issue.
“I thought if I got a bunch of people to write in, it might make us stand out on the radar for her and, boom, this is where we are now.”
Brockovich is famous for her persistence in constructing a case against Pacific Gas and Electric Company, exposing the company for leaking toxic Chromium 6 into the ground water, which affected the health of the population of Hinkley, Calif. Brockovich and Ed Masry spearheaded the largest direct action lawsuit of its kind in 1996 and PG&E was forced to pay out $333 million in damages to more than 600 Hinkley residents. Her efforts were portrayed in a movie with Julia Roberts playing her.
“We’ve been putting in long hours on this and we’re basically going from dawn to dusk,” Gregory said. “So, when everybody was getting responses it was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty exciting.’”
Don Breen, a manager at Northern Pulp, told The News last week in response to comments made on the Facebook group that he doesn’t recall any scientific studies linking the pulp and paper industry to cancer and the wastewater treatment system at Boat Harbour is well in compliance with all federal and provincial regulations, standards and requirements. He also said heavy metals, furans or dioxins are not byproducts of the mill’s operations.
Breen also said the biomass from Boat Harbour is not burned as fuel in the mill’s boiler and the solid material that settles in the wastewater treatment settling ponds is mainly wood waste and lime and that material is trucked back to the mill site to cover the mill's industrial landfill site.
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– With files from John Brannen