Reject Pugwash Wind Farm EA Over Shoddy Consultation

PRESS RELEASE

Reject Pugwash Wind Farm EA Over Shoddy Consultation: Gulf Shore Preservation Association

Pugwash - Minister Sterling Belliveau has received a letter from the Gulf Shore Preservation Association outlining concerns with the quality of community consultation provided as part of the Pugwash Wind Farm Environmental Assessment.

“The Minister is being asked to believe public consultations that occurred five years ago regarding an aborted wind project proposed by the same developer constitutes consultation on the current proposal. He is also being asked to accept that native communities do not deserve to be consulted before Environmental Assessments are complete,” said Lisa Betts, Chair of the Gulf Shore Preservation Association.

In the consultation chapter of the Pugwash Wind Farm Environmental Assessment the proponent admits to extensive, demonstrated and prolonged community opposition to this latest incarnation of the project aborted five years ago. In addition, by submitting the Environmental Assessment before the Mi’kmaq Ecological Study (MEKS) is complete, the proponent is asking the minister to devalue the rights of First Nations people to be consulted.

“These are serious issues that the Minister of the Environment must address if Environmental Assessments in Nova Scotia are going to be worth the paper they are written on.” Said Lisa Betts “We do not see how in good conscience or in following Nova Scotia environmental requirements, the Minister can deem this project worthy of approval.”

Lisa Betts

Chair
Gulf Shore Preservation Association

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Assessment of Pugwash Wind Farm Environmental Assessment: Consultation Section (Chapter Five)

Minister Belliveau,

On behalf of concerned residents of Pugwash, I wish to make you aware of a number of issues residents have with the accuracy of the Pugwash Wind Farm Environmental Assessment. While your ministry has determined the document to be complete and ready for a decision, members of the community remain puzzled as to how that is possible after having reviewed the text.

It is our hope that you will recognize that this Environmental Assessment is lacking and not worthy of approval.

One of the largest issues citizens identified when reviewing the Environmental Assessment document is that it isn’t a single Environmental Assessment about a single proposal. The proponent has hobbled together research from an aborted attempt at a project in Pugwash in 2006 and re-packaged it into the current proposal, such as it is.

When reviewing what the proponent has determined to be the ‘consultation’ document for this project, there is a clear acknowledgement that the community has been and remains overwhelmingly opposed to the project.

Further, the Gulf Shore Preservation Association (GSPA) has audio evidence that demonstrates the proponent’s claims about what occurred at the August, 2010 consultation described in section 5.3 (page 66) are simply inaccurate. Residents did not lose interest when the presentation equipment failed. To the contrary. more than an hour of questions were asked by the audience, after which a remarkable degree of opposition to the project remained.

With the proponent acknowledging long standing and intensifying opposition to either proposal for a wind project, how is it that the government can still believe that this project is in the best interest of the community? Do citizens matter at all in this process to your Ministry?

Why is your Ministry allowing a proponent to re-use five year old materials that were prepared for a distinctly different, aborted project to skirt around doing their homework on the present project?

I would respectfully request that in your capacity as Minister of the Environment you reject the Environmental Assessment that has been submitted for the Pugwash Wind Farm on the grounds that the document is both inaccurate and incomplete.

Sincerely,
Lisa Betts
Chair
Gulf Shore Preservation Association