People living and working closest to two newly approved salmon farm leases don’t want the salmon farms.
More than 80 per cent of the population of Long and Brier islands and all of the lobster fishermen last year signed a petition against the project.
Despite the local opposition, Nova Scotia’s minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Sterling Belliveau, approved the two leases for Cooke Aquaculture this week. That gave the New Brunswick company the go-ahead to install salmon farms on two sites covering a total of 84 hectares (209 acres) in St. Mary’s Bay, just around Dartmouth Point from Freeport and Westport.
Rikki Clements, who lives about 300 metres from a Cooke Aquaculture salmon farm already in operation in Grand Passage near Westport, says the people on Brier Island are easy going and don’t like to complain.
“We are a fishing community and we’re used to the noise and smells of fishing, but this is something else. It stinks, the smell is coming right in the house. The beach here is covered in slime.”
She believes the smell and slime are there because the site has never been properly left fallow or rested.
“They have let it fallow maybe 15 days out of the last 10 years. They have pushed it to the max.”
She worries what the two new farms, each eight times bigger than the Grand Passage site, will do to traditional lobster fishing grounds in St. Mary’s Bay.
“What they have done here (in Grand Passage), what they’re doing in New Brunswick and what they are proposing to do out there (in St. Mary’s Bay), is not safe, it’s not environmentally sustainable, it’s not good.”
David Tudor of Freeport, the area’s Municipality of Digby councilor, says the local view of the Grand Passage site has not been positive.
“It’s been a disaster—very few jobs and so many issues. It’s almost never been fallowed, but they can get away with that because there is just no regulation here in Nova Scotia. It’s the wild west.”
Tudor says he doesn’t speak for municipal council but in his own personal opinion there should have been more study and more meaningful consultation.
“In my personal opinion, I think if this project is as great as they say it is, or bad as they say it is, then a joint panel review (provincial and federal) was the way to go.
“A joint panel review would have allowed us to get to the bottom of this but there was no interest on the part of the province to really look into the long-term environmental effects or the socio-economic impacts. They didn’t want to know.”
Primarily, the people of the Islands are worried what impact the new farms will have on the traditional lobster fishery, the mainstay of the islands’ economy.
Tudor says the federal screening was more about fish farms than about lobster.
“They studied how the environment would affect the salmon, not how the salmon would affect the environment.”
Sheldon Dixon, a fisherman from Tiverton, says the federal study was “no better than a grade 5 book report.”
“We’ve got a $400 million dollar fishery here in LFA 34,” says Dixon. “We have a beautiful pristine lobster ground here. I’m proud to say we have the best lobster in the world for eating. Why would you want to do anything to put that at risk?
“If the lobster goes, there will be nothing here in Freeport. What are we supposed to do? Go to work at a minimum wage on a salmon farm? That’s what they want.”
Belliveau says there will be a strict monitoring program.
“The company has to abide by the conditions or the lease will be terminated, though I’m confident we won’t be in that position,” Belliveau said “We did our homework. We’re there to protect the environment and the traditional fishery in a suitable manner.
“We made this decision in the best interest of the people of Nova Scotia. We listened to the fishermen and special interest groups and we have captured their concerns in the conditions of the lease agreement.”
Tudor says it would have been nice if the minister had actually visited the community.
“He was in Digby a couple times, but he was never on Long Island or Brier Island. Not once.”
Karen Crocker of Freeport, chair of the St. Mary’s Bay Coastal Alliance, says none of the concerns in hundreds of letters or requests for additional information have ever been addressed.
“We have received no feedback at all. His staff took our questions and said, ‘Good question’ but we never got even a bad answer. When we met with him in Digby, he refused to comment until he had read the federal reports. Then he got the reports and approved the leases. For the minister to state that he has met with the community and alleviated the concerns of fishers and community members is not true.”
She says if the minister is in possession of good science which would reassure the people of the Islands, then he should share it with them.
“No one knows what the long-term cumulative effects of these farms will be,” she says. “In 10 years’ time when we are hauling up empty traps, maybe we’ll know, but it will be too late.”
