J.D. Irving Ltd. has applied for approval to install a new effluent treatment system at its pulp mill at Lake Utopia but it's not clear what difference it will make to the Bay of Fundy estuary it flows into.

The company says the upgrades will reduce odours and capture methane gas to bring down fossil fuel use at the mill.

"This reduction in fossil fuel energy can be equated to heating 4,200 New Brunswick homes per year," said Mary Keith, a JDI spokesperson.

"Adding a process water storage tank will dramatically reduce the outdoor storage of untreated, odorous liquids."

An environment impact assessment application says the upgrades will also allow the mill to increase production of high-grade corrugated medium, used for such things as cardboard boxes.

The upgrades are expected to cost $29 million.

The project has not yet received environmental approval.

Effluent into stream

Effluent from the mill is currently discharged following treatment into a stream that flows directly into the L'etang Estuary.

Last Wednesday, water in the stream had the colouring of black coffee as it passed under Route 785 below the mill site. In an email statement, Keith said the colouring of the water itself "is not typically harmful."

"The quality of the effluent is measured using biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids and Acute Lethality tests on rainbow trout [rainbow trout must survive in pure effluent for 72 hours]
," said Keith.

"We are in full compliance."

The Lake Utopia mill had serious consequences for the marine environment in the years after its construction in the early 1970s.

While environmental regulations governing the mill have improved, a two-kilometre length of the upper estuary remains dammed off to tidal waters.

That dam was built in 1989 to prevent pulp mill effluent from mixing with seawater and to eliminate the rotten egg stench of decaying pulp fibres experienced at low tide by travellers passing on Highway 1.

The dammed area, which is mostly to the north of the highway, is now a fresh water enclosure.

Hugh Akagi, a retired fisheries technician, recalls attempts to collect core samples from the sea bottom in the upper estuary after construction of the dam.

"I had a plastic corer that I used for a lot of analysis," said Akagi.

"I couldn't get it in, it was just like cement."

Akagi said he suspects the layer of pulp fibre is preventing nutrients in the water from reaching the sediment below.

To return the upper estuary to its original state, he said, the dam built at Pull and Be Damned Narrows below the highway would have to be removed and the Highway 1 causeway replaced by a bridge, similar to what is happening with the Petitcodiac River.

'You have to let it flush properly'

"The solutions are the same," said Akagi.

"You have to let it flush properly."

He suspects the bottom of the entire estuary above the bridge would then have to be dredged to remove pulp fibre that has settled there making it difficult to collect core samples.

None of those changes is described in the JDI environmental impact assessment application.

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick is following JDI's plans for the site.

Matthew Abbott, the council's Fundy Baykeeper, said he would like to see provincial environment officials take a longer view in the EIA process to include improving existing conditions in the L'etang estuary.

"It's been very heavily impacted by this pulp and paper mill," said Abbott.

"We need to look at the full picture and sort of make sure that we understand the issues as they stand, not just look at one very narrow aspect of this, really ensure that the most possible is being done."

The timeline in the EIA application calls for construction of the upgrades to be completed by the fall of 2017 but said that could be "shifted out" by as much as 12 months.

 

Source: cbc.ca

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