Letter: You can’t take the milk out of the tea – Northern Pulp’s proposal to dump treated waste into the Northumberland Strait

Northern Pulp’s proposal “to dump 62 million litres per day of treated waste into the rich fishing grounds of the the Northumberland Strait” as referenced in “Premier: ‘No easy solution here’ “(The Chronicle Herald, Dec. 27), is not any kind of a solution; it would be an environmental calamity.

That particular body of tidal water, the warmest summer water temperature in Eastern Canada and a tourism mecca; coming ashore on three provinces; the site of a prolific shellfish and lobster industry and emptying on both of its ends directly into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, has its own life that we must protect.

I sadly believe Premier Stephen McNeil and the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia will find some way to weasel out of their environmental due diligence to current and future generations of Nova Scotians, New Brunswickers and Prince Edward Islanders, and will surrender to Paper Excellence, the owners of Northern Pulp, that in turn is owned by an Indonesian agri-business conglomerate, which is owned by one the Indonesia’s richest men.

It does not matter an iota if the effluent is treated or not; it is not sea water. That effluent is a poisonous-waste concoction that I firmly believe will be cause irreversible environmental destruction to the Northumberland Strait and its inhabitants.

As was stated to me years ago: “You can’t take the milk out of the tea” and common sense tells us that you can’t take Northern Pulp’s waste effluent out of the Northumberland Strait or the Gulf of St. Lawrence and probably the Atlantic Ocean — but you can prevent it from entering.

Ray Bates is a resident of Guysborough.

See also: Letter: Killing Nova Scotia by a thousand cuts