A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has approved an agreement between the Nova Scotia government and Paper Excellence, the company that owns Northern Pulp.
This means the final end for the controversial Pictou County paper mill, shut down by the province in early 2020 after more than 50 years of dumping its effluent.
Under the agreement approved Friday by the judge Shelley Fitzpatrick, Paper Excellency gives up trying to reopen the Northern Pulp and withdraws its $450 million lawsuit against the province.
The company also agrees to pay an additional $30 million to the pension fund of its former employees.
Paper Excellence, headquartered in British Columbia, will now explore the possibility of opening a new bleached kraft pulp mill in the Liverpoolin Nova Scotia.
The first step will be the preparation of a feasibility study. One of the things the company is looking to see is whether the 14%-plus rate of return it believes it needs to be profitable would be possible with a new plant.
Who will decontaminate the site of the Northern Pulp?
This feasibility study will also be decisive for the future of Pictou County facilities.
If it is concluded that a new factory can be profitable, Paper Excellence will be obliged to maintain the site of the Northern Pulp – but not to decontaminate it. This site could then be used to store timber or equipment before transporting it to Liverpool.
On the other hand, if a project Liverpool is not viable, Paper Excellence will be forced to decommission and demolish the paper mill Northern Pulpsell the land it owns in Nova Scotia in order to pay its creditors, and invest $15 million in a plan to close the site.
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In order to keep the Northern Pulp open, the company wanted to install a 15 km pipeline to discharge its effluent. On July 6, 2018, opponents of this project demonstrated in Pictou.
Photo: CBC / Steve Lawrence
Decontamination of the site of the Northern Pulp should cost a lot more than that. On Thursday, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and his Minister of the Environment, Tim Halmanboth said they did not know the degree of contamination of the premises.
There are no recent estimates of sanitation costs, said the Prime Minister.
In Halifax, the leaders of the two opposition parties are worried that taxpayers will end up footing the bill to decontaminate the place.
We need to know if there is a plan to clean up this horrible place, where generations of environmental devastation have affected an indigenous community
declared the leader of the official Liberal opposition, Zach Churchill.
The New Democratic leader Claudia Chender recalled that the adoption by the former Liberal government of the law which eventually led to the closure of the Northern Pulp existed for Pictou Landing, Pictou County and the Province […] and this task is not complete unless the site is cleaned up.”,”text”:”correct historical wrongs against the people of Pictou Landing, Pictou County and the province […] and this task is not complete if the site is not cleaned.”}}”>correct historical wrongs against the people of Pictou LandingPictou County and the province […] and this task is not complete if the site is not cleaned.
At the time of the shutdown, the province said cleanup of Boat Harbour, where the plant discharged its effluent, would begin in 2021. Now it is said the work could
start in 2024 and would last seven years (New window).
According to the report of Michael Gorman (CBC) and information from The Canadian Press
