HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA | Saturday April 14, 2007
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HERE WE GO with another huge quarry, a massive hole in the ground presented as economic development. Again, the question: Is it, really? This one’s a proposed new gypsum quarry over some 1,200 acres on the Avon peninsula, which is bounded by the Avon and Kennetcook rivers. You see part of it across the tidal inlet from the causeway on Highway 101 at Windsor.
Fundy Gypsum, a subsidiary of United States Gypsum of Chicago, is expected to file its application shortly. Residents have raised some 2,500 names on a petition opposing it, saying it will ruin the water table, the agricultural nature of the peninsula, its tourism potential, and the quality of life.
The proposal lines others recently in the news: a gravel mega-quarry that would gouge out a huge chunk of Digby Neck, strip mining for coal in Cape Breton, and recently a request for an open pit gold mine in a provincial park near Moose River. What’s the real deal when it comes to open pit mining, in particular how do these projects square with the MacDonald government’s recent bill to make Nova Scotia one of the world’s leading environmental jurisdictions by 2020?
Fundy Gypsum already has a quarry at Miller Creek, at the entrance to the Avon peninsula. That and another company quarry at Wentworth are due to be exhausted by 2012 and the company wants to replace them with the new one. It has a railroad and loading terminal at Hantsport. There are some 160 jobs involved, and that’s important to Hantsport and Windsor.
On the other side of the ledger, we have the fact that gypsum operations have produced fewer jobs as they mechanized more. Fundy Gypsum had some 500 employees in the 1950s when its operations covered a few hundred acres. Now it’s down to 160 employees over thousands of acres. The likely future, then, is fewer and fewer jobs even if the new quarry proceeds. Royalties on gypsum are almost nothing. And despite having some 80 per cent of Canadian production and virtually all its exports for a couple of centuries, only recently has Nova Scotia had an actual wallboard plant (which is what gypsum is mainly used for) – at Point Tupper, built with the help of over $6 million in provincial financing.
Meanwhile, the large gypsum companies – like Fundy’s parent – are reclaiming gypsum from demolitions and construction dumps and using residues from sulphur dioxide scrubbers on coal-fired power plants to make a synthetic equivalent, an example of sound environmental sense. And the U.S. housing market is crashing. If that’s the picture, why a new mine at all, you might ask.
The answer is that it’s high quality stuff close to tidewater and therefore dirt cheap, so to speak. The tidewater part is what makes Nova Scotia such an attractive gravel pit for big American companies, assuming the natives can be kept quiet and the government compliant.
The natives, however, are not only increasingly restive, but have a point. The approaches to the peninsula are all mined and gouged. Does the peninsula itself have to meet the same fate? At about six kilometres across and sloping to the water on three sides, serious questions about the watershed are indeed raised if the centre is mined out. What many find particularly galling is that in 2003, West Hants Municipality, drawing on Department of Natural Resources information, designated the peninsula as a high farming priority area and low priority for mining. Many made plans and settled in, feeling secure. Now this. The Hants County Federation of Agriculture is among those opposing the mine.
The point about economic choices is this. Some 160 jobs are the equivalent of a medium-sized business. Losing them can be made to look like a panic situation. But in the long run, if a quarry is going to ruin the agriculture, the tourism and other local enterprise that depends on people being attached to land unspoiled by mega-quarries, what is gained? What is the sounder future? Besides, we have labour shortages in the trades. And 2012 is plenty of time to adjust.
I have a further question. The background literature on the DNR website virtually brags about gypsum, a residue of dried-out shallow seas along with a companion mineral, anhydrite, outcropping all over the place throughout northeastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. If Fundy Gypsum does indeed require a new quarry in 2012, why here, in this particularly sensitive area? Why not somewhere over the hill in those many other places?
Fundy Gypsum denies it all. It’s just a pit out of sight. Its other operations coexist with farming, no problem, and it helps neighbouring farmers with water issues whenever it can. No doubt it does. Opponents, however, point to the company’s stealthy approach – buying the land bit by bit without declaring its intentions, clearcutting it, building roads, core drilling, and essentially meaning to present the government with a near fait accompli.
From the personal angle, consider the case of Raymond Parker. He’s a local boy who got educated, spent 20 years as a professor (of environmental science) in Toronto, then chucked it all to come back and do the right thing: take over the family farm, create his own power from solar and wind, and farm organically – all on the understanding that this was farming land that would be respected as such. He also became head of the Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society, which is leading the resistance. If you live in Halifax, imagine if they told you the Commons or Point Pleasant Park had to be gouged out a couple of hundred feet deep because some large multinational needs the dirt.
In the end, however, what the objectors are asking is this: a full environmental assessment report, with public hearings on the terms of reference and the report itself. Area MP Scott Brison recently lent a hand, asking this of provincial Environment Minister Mark Parent. The company wants to avoid this like the plague. Here’s something else, at the very least, for which the time has come: to have these things transacted in the open.
Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.