January 26, 2005
N.S. construction company to blame for
inadvertently killing lake, scientist says
HALIFAX
A once pristine lake in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley has dried up partly because the province’s Environment Department gave a local construction company free rein to mine peat moss in an adjacent bog, says a noted biologist.
Martin Willison, a Dalhousie University professor who is active in the environmental movement, wrote the province’s natural resources minister last summer to complain about the condition of Wood Lake, near Coldbrook, N.S., and to ask for its restoration.
“This has always been a lake in the past and it’s not a lake any more; it’s a mud hole,” Willison said of the Crown-owned lake in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.
“We have a provincially owned, publicly owned mud hole. It did not dry up naturally.”
The 1.2-hectare lake was steadily drained over the last three years because the “adjacent Baltzer’s Bog has been partly mined away,” said Willison’s Aug. 16 letter to Hurlburt.
“A deep drainage channel has been cut through the middle of the bog. . . . This artificial channel is undoubtedly not the only reason for the drying of the lake, but it is a major cause.”
Hurlburt replied in mid-December, saying his department largely agreed with Willison’s assessment, but passed the concerns off as a matter for the Environment Department.
The peat mining operation has been at the centre of complaints and criticisms of the Environment Department’s review process for almost five years.
Mark-Lynn Construction Ltd. was granted a permit to dig up four hectares of top soil in the privately owned bog without undergoing an environmental impact assessment.
The project was never reviewed, because local environment inspectors said at the time that the wetland was not a unique, sensitive area.
Subsequent research and tests by local residents and Willison dispute that claim.
As it turns out, the bog is home to a unique species of spagnum moss and is the only wetland in the province that is nestled among sand hills.
The company, which received $204,750 in provincial government grants and loans, violated its permit by mining over six hectares.
“The lake has become collateral damage,” said Willison.
“This is like the canary in the coal mine. It’s showing us that there’s something wrong with our public (environmental) approval process.”
Environment Minister Kerry Morash ordered the digging operation shut down in October 2003.
No one from Mark-Lyn Construction was available to comment over the weekend.
However, company owner Peter Thomas did undertake some remediation efforts in the bog, such as filling in a drainage ditch outside of the permit area.
He publicly defended the project last year, saying the entire wetland area had already dried up when his company began its work.
A hydrologist from the department is currently studying Willison’s complaints and in an interview, the environment minister held out the possibility that the province will try and repair the damage.
“I’m not aware of specifics regarding the lake,” said Morash. “The goal of the department is to try and take care of these areas. Sometimes things happen that we do have to remediate.”
Coldbrook residents were opposed to the operation because of its possible effect on local drinking water. They complained to the provincial ombudsman’s office, which has yet to finish an investigation.
The Canadian Press
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