CBC reports, “People are raising concerns about the disposal of fracking wastewater in Colchester County (in Nova Scotia) after (Debert) municipal staff gave the green light to put the water through its sewage treatment system.” Debert is about 115 kilometres north of Halifax.
The Truro Daily adds, “Atlantic Industrial Services (AIS) has applied to discharge 4.5 million litres of fracking waste that is currently being held in storage lagoons in Debert. ….(Approval was granted by Public Works director Ramesh Ummant)… The approval is effective on May 26, subject to AIS meeting all municipal standards and also any appeal that may be forthcoming.”
The CBC article notes, “Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau said the decision comes after a pilot project designed to remove radioactive elements was completed. …Belliveau said the project has been successful in removing radioactive materials from the water but Andrew Younger, the Liberal environment critic, remains skeptical. ‘We have not seen the tests on what the water contained when it went into the system and we haven’t seen tests that show what the level of contamination is when it comes out of that system. That information has to become public,’ said Younger.”
It also highlights, “Jennifer West of the Ecology Action Center agrees. ‘All of the communities along the Shaganoy River all along the Minas Basin and Bay of Fundy and all of the ecosystems — the fish — all of the animals living in these areas are at risk and we need to be aware of that. It’s not just us,’ she said.”
Colchester Council has the final say on what is discharged into the sewage treatment system. People are encouraged to write the County’s chief administrative officer – no later than April 10 – to express their opposition on this matter. Contact information for the County can be found here.
In terms of past work on this issue, in September 2012, the Council of Canadians signed on to a submission by concerned citizens and organizations to Colchester County Council expressing concern about the application to dump fracking-wastewater in their sewage system.
And it should be noted that between March 2010 and August 2011, more than 7 million litres of fracking wastewater from AIS was put through Windsor’s sewage treatment plant. The water was process and then pumped into Minas Basin. Windsor is located about 110 kilometres north-west of Debert. In October 2012, CBC reported, “(AIS) is in possession of not only 4.5 million litres of waste water from (Triangle Petroleum’s) fracked wells in the Kennetcook area, but has also received approximately 11 million litres of fracked wastewater from (Corridor Resources Inc’s operations in) the Penobsquis area of New Brunswick.”
We can win this! In late-2011, the Council of Canadians successfully opposed a plan that would have allowed fracking-polluted wastewater being discharged through a wastewater treatment plant in Niagara Falls, New York into the Niagara River.
For more, please read:
NEWS: Colchester County, NS could accept fracking-polluted wastewater
NEWS: 7 million litres of fracking wastewater put through Windsor, NS sewage treatment plant
‘Don’t Frack With Our Water’ campaign page
Concerns about fracking wastewater in sewage systems
