nova scotia

- by Roger Taylor, February 26, 2015, Herald Business

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"407","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 444px; height: 251px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Aaron Beswick/Truro Bureau"}}]]Hardwood trees are being allowed to go up in smoke, and with them a number of rural manufacturing jobs that are hard to replace.

It is easy to reach that conclusion after reading stories about several companies in rural Nova Scotia that have been making products from hardwood.

Just recently, the inability to access enough local hardwood was one of the reasons given by the owners of River’s Bend Wood Products Inc. for shutting down their flooring plant.

The factory in rural Antigonish County once employed 17 workers, but that number has been slowly whittled away. Now the remaining 11 employees will lose their jobs at the mill.

- by Matt Miller and Raymond Plouride, February 4, 2015, Chronicle Herald

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"382","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Aaron Beswick / Chronicle Herald"}}]]In a Jan. 9 story about damage to our forests as a result of the need to feed the giant new Nova Scotia Power biomass generator in Port Hawkesbury (“Biomass project raising green concerns”), Associate Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Allan Eddy suggested that these negative impacts were simply unintended consequences that “couldn’t have been predicted before the plant opened.”

This is simply wrong.

There were plenty of warnings that the proposed biomass project was too big to be sustainable and it strains the limits of credibility to suggest that the department responsible for managing our forests was unaware of the potential negative impacts.

Numerous stakeholders, individuals and experts predicted this outcome and laid out clear steps to try to mitigate the ecological damage that the advent of this huge new consumptive pressure would bring.

- by Aaron Beswick, January 9, 2015, The Chronicle Herald

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"373","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Aaron Beswick/Truro Bureau"}}]]About 2,790 hectares.

That’s a rough estimate of how much woodland will need to be cut annually to feed Nova Scotia Power’s biomass boiler at Point Tupper.

“It seems that more of the fears are coming true than the benefits we had envisioned from that facility,” said Kari Easthouse, manager of the Cape Breton Private Land Partnership.

Foresters in northern Nova Scotia are warning that the wood being burned at Nova Scotia Power’s new biomass boiler may be green, but the electricity coming out of it isn’t.

-  Rachel Brighton, October 10, 2014, The Chronicle Herald

[More evidence of biomass energy competing for limited wood source.]

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"302","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"271","style":"width: 333px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: thechronicleherald.ca","width":"480"}}]]Opening up long-term access to western Crown lands will relieve some of the pressure that has been building in the forestry sector this year.

This week the province announced that 16 sawmills and manufacturers had been granted 10-year allocations on the former Bowater lands and other Crown land west of Highway 101.

Many sawmills had been crying out for this Crown access since late 2012, when the province acquired the assets of the defunct Bowater Mersey Paper Co.,including its vast tracts of timberlands in the southwest of the province.

This spring the province granted temporary access to these lands to 12 sawmills and two other players in the forestry industry: Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd., which produces hardboard siding in Lunenburg County, and Northern Pulp Nova Scotia Corp.

Emera Energy, which operates a biomass plant in Brooklyn that produces electricity for Nova Scotia Power Inc., was also allowed to harvest on Crown land this year, under a separate agreement with the province.

The new allocations secure access for mostly the same group of mills that gained the spring licences, but with a few left out and a few more added. Northern Pulp’s access to western Crown land has also been assured for the next decade.

Alongside these allocations, the province has a separate Crown land agreement with Port Hawkesbury Paper LP.

As well, Nova Scotia Power has become a significant buyer of biomass, through independent contractors, to feed its power plant in Point Tupper.

The allocations conclude a year in which there has been acute price competition for firewood and low-grade hardwood, spiked by expanding demand for biomass at Nova Scotia Power’s Point Tupper plant and, as some sawmills and contractors maintain, by Northern Pulp’s acquisition of hardwood pulpwood.

There has also been a logjam in getting wood out of the forest into the market, caused in part by a major contraction in the number of forestry contractors and truckers.

Some households felt the force of these market factors this year, when the price for firewood shot up after last year’s heavy winter. Some firewood suppliers told me their customers were hoarding wood for fear of a shortage, making the problem worse.

[The forest footprint for a biomass incinerator is massive. Will be interesting to see if any probe is done in regards to this facility. -Ed.]

-  by Erin Pottie, June 27, 2014, Cape Breton Bureau

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"223","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 187px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: CBC"}}]]A Cape Breton environmental group is calling for an emergency review of harvesting practices at Nova Scotia Power’s biomass plant in Point Tupper.

On Friday, the Margaree Environmental Association issued a letter to Premier Stephen McNeil requesting a delay in harvesting to allow the province to examine the plant’s wood supply.

Association co-chair Neal Livingston said the plant has shown itself to be a “voracious” consumer of wood fibre.

Not only is quality material being directed to the plant, there is also too much forest resource being cut, he added.

“You basically kinda have a monster there and it wants to be fed,” Livingston said. “I think that rather than get it wrong and have it continue to be a bigger and bigger problem, it’s a really good time to take a look at what’s going on here.”

NSP has said up to 650,000 tonnes of wood waste will be needed to run the plant per year.

The 60-megawatt power generating station, located in Richmond County, is part of Nova Scotia’s plan to source 25 per cent of the province’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

But in recent months, business owners who rely on the forest for a living have told The Chronicle Herald that high-quality hardwoods are making their way into the biomass plant.

- by Lois Ann Dort, Guysborough Journal

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"192","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 189px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;"}}]]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.”

- by Aaron Beswick, May 15, 2014, Source: Truro Bureau

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"193","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 300px; height: 220px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;","title":"Photo: Industcards.coom"}}]]Nova Scotia is having trouble keeping up with the requirement for fibre at the biomass boiler at Point Tupper, says the natural resources minister.

“There’s not enough fibre right now in the province to support demands placed on that sector,” Zach Churchill said Thursday, referring to the amount of fibre available on Crown land.

Churchill was responding to questions from reporters about whether hardwood sawlogs are being burned in the boiler to produce electricity rather than going to hardwood sawmills where they could be processed into a higher-value product.

- by Tom Ayer , May 12, 2014, Source: Cape Breton Bureau

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"192","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 189px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;","title":"Photo: Erin Pottie, Cape Breton Bureau"}}]]Business owners in Cape Breton who rely on the forest for a living say high-quality hardwoods are making their way into Nova Scotia Power’s biomass plant in Point Tupper, consuming a wood supply that instead should be available for value-added businesses such as flooring and lumber.

David Fraser of BA Fraser Lumber in Margaree Valley, Inverness County, says he is seeing fewer quality saw logs and he blames it on Nova Scotia Power’s policy of getting the most amount of biomass fuel for the cheapest price.