Concerns Voiced over Nova Scotia Biomass Logging

- by Lois Ann Dort, Guys­bor­ough Journal

Last week Nova Sco­tia Pow­er held one of many region­al com­mit­tee meet­ings at the Port Hawkes­bury Civic Cen­tre. Mem­bers of the Munic­i­pal­i­ty of the Dis­trict of Guys­brough coun­cil were on hand and voiced con­cerns about the har­vest­ing of bio­mass in the dis­trict to sup­ply the bio­mass plant at Point Tup­per. The top­ic was briefly dis­cussed at the reg­u­lar month­ly coun­cil meet­ing on Wednes­day, May 14. After coun­cil adjourned War­den Ver­non Pitts spoke to the media about coun­cil’s concerns.

 “What we’ve been pre­sent­ed and what we’ve been sold at the start­ing line are two dif­fer­ent things,” said Pitts. When asked to clar­i­fy the dis­crep­an­cy he stat­ed, “The dis­crep­an­cy is that they are basi­cal­ly clear cutting.”

 “My sense of bio­mass is that you cut a log, val­ue added. You take the branch­es, you take the top; that is your bio­mass. We’re los­ing sight of that at present…The con­trac­tor is going in they are slash­ing the for­est down and they are tak­ing the log for bio­mass to chip and they are leav­ing the branch­es and the tops there for fer­til­iza­tion. Some­one smarter than me must have come up with this, ” said Pitts jok­ing­ly. “You don’t have to plant seedlings any­more, you let regen take over and you save more mon­ey there.”

 When asked how NSP respond­ed to their con­cerns at the com­mit­tee meet­ing, Pitts said NSP defend­ed their posi­tion, though weak­ly. “The Munic­i­pal­i­ty of the Dis­trict of Guys­bor­ough and our coun­cil­lors at that meet­ing were not the only ones that brought up prob­lems with biomass…If you were to jump in your vehi­cle right now and trav­el to Coun­try Har­bour through the 12 Mile Woods, going through there it looks like a moonscape…There are no trees and this was beau­ti­ful wood­land with prime hard­wood stands and prime spruce and fir. It’s gone now. They say it regen­er­ates itself, it’s renew­able ener­gy. I agree it is renew­able but it is not going to be in our life­time nor my chil­dren’s lifetime.”

 “Yes­ter­day (at the NSP meet­ing) I gave the expla­na­tion that in the Lundy area, Lar­ry’s Riv­er, Guys­bor­ough as a whole, we have maybe that much top soil,” said Pitts indi­cat­ing a few cen­time­tres between his fin­ger and thumb, “we have trees grow­ing on rocks.” He went on to say that small trees would grow in such soil but their size did not indi­cate their age; a small tree that might look like a 10 or 20 year old tree in a soil rich area could be 50 to 100 years old in these less hos­pitable soils. “Once you cut that, it is gone. It is not com­ing back.”

 Pitts said coun­cil was not sat­is­fied with the feed­back on the bio­mass project they had received from NSP. No fur­ther course of action on the top­ic was out­lined at the coun­cil meeting.

 In oth­er busi­ness, MODG staff mem­bers Glen Avery, Direc­tor of Pub­lic Works and Shawn Andrews, IT & Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices Coor­di­na­tor were rec­og­nized for their coor­di­na­tion and lead­er­ship efforts dur­ing the Can­so Ice Storm. They were both pre­sent­ed with a framed cer­tifi­cate thank­ing them for their work dur­ing this emer­gency sit­u­a­tion which saw the com­mu­ni­ty of Can­so with­out pow­er for five days ear­li­er this spring.