The Big Smoke

Plans for a hazardous-waste incinerator in Belledune, northwest of Bathurst, N.B., have run foul of two New Brunswick environmental groups: the Conservation Council and Environnement-Vie.

The project proponent, Bennett Environmental, prefers not to call it an incinerator; it’s a “high-temperature thermal oxidation facility.” We’ll stick with “incinerator” for brevity, but Bennett does have a point. The plant is supposed to burn up hydrocarbons in contaminated soils, and combustion products are collected, re-burned, and treated before being released. What’s left is soil that meets the nationwide guidelines for agricultural soils. In short, it’s not your father’s incinerator.

That doesn’t seem to reassure anyone in the public-policy industry. The two groups have cherry-picked quotes from the reams of memoranda and reports that this kind of project generates to make it appear that environmental regulators either see, or should see, great danger in the project.

There has been a call for a full environmental impact assessment. That was the provincial government’s position until January, when the project was exempted. The environmental groups say this was the result of pressure from the Department of Business.

The wisdom of a full study seems obvious. This is a large project, with important uses, and big projects can always have big impacts. But we see the hand of obstructionism inside the glove of public concern: the environmental assessment process is one of the anti-industrial crowd’s favourite defensive formations.

No doubt Bennett Environmental would like to vault past the assessment; it would save consulting fees. Still, if the project is as sound as the company says, there would be great value in having an independent study give it a clean bill of health.

If that happens, though, watch the environmental groups run straight to the courts to block the project there. The approvals process is not designed to reduce the stakes the two sides are playing for. We in the mining industry already know that.

Not-in-my-back-yard thinking has gripped northeastern New Brunswick, even though this plant offers a chance to do some useful soil remediation.