Tag Archives: Justice Heather Robertson
Ownerless Bay of Fundy turbine operating without fish kill monitoring gear
Even before Cape Sharp Tidal, owned by Irish company OpenHydro and Emera, placed it on the floor of the Minas Passage two weeks ago and OpenHydro was placed in receivership days later, the 10-billion tonnes of seawater hauled into the narrowing between Cape Split and Cape Chignecto was already tainted by bad blood. “The opposition isn’t about just whether it kills fish because other things kill fish too — fishermen kill fish,” said Mary McPhee, former facilities operator for the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, the government-funded tidal test site commonly known as FORCE. “What fishermen want is for the tidal power people to be treated in the same manner as they are. They want the law to be applied equally. So if a fishery has a quota, why can’t tidal power have a quota?” >click to read<08:47
Fundy fishermen lose bid to stop tidal turbine in Minas Basin
A group of Bay of Fundy fishermen have lost a bid to overturn the approval of a project in Nova Scotia’s Minas Basin. In February, the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen’s Association argued in Nova Scotia Supreme Court that the province’s environment minister granted approval of the project without enough environmental data. The group, which represents 175 fishermen from Yarmouth to the New Brunswick border, says it believes the tidal energy program will harm marine life. The first turbine was deployed in November. In particular, the group has accused the operators of the turbine of failing to produce “relevant baseline data,” or a snapshot of the environmental state of the Bay of Fundy before the turbine was deployed. On Monday, Justice Heather Robertson rejected the claims by the fishermen, saying “extraordinary efforts have been made to evaluate risk” in the 2009 environmental assessment of the turbine project. click here to read the story 15:37
