News

Province Unveils Lawrencetown Beach Redevelopment Plans

By Mackenzie Myatt On Wednesday, June 5th, more than 100 people attended and were highly engaged in the NS Department of Lands and Forests information presentation and public consultation on the redevelopment of Lawrencetown Beach at Lawrencetown Community Centre. The meeting came only days after community residents and area surfers had gathering for a paint-in protest at the main beach building.

June 30, 2019

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Replacing Stock Transportation

By Mackenzie Myatt In a statement to the public on June 6th, Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) revealed they have notified Stock Transportation that their contract will end early and a new service provider will be in place for the 2020-21 school year. In the meantime, Stock Transportation will still be supplying service for the 2019-2020 school year.

June 30, 2019

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Area Rate Vote May Be Coming At Last

By Richard Bell After more than two years of delays, property owners in and around Musquodoboit Harbour may finally get to vote this summer on whether to keep or kill a local area rate on their tax bills. This rate is a half cent ($0.005) per $100 of assessed value for all residential and resource properties in the Musquodoboit Harbour, East & West Petpeswick, Ostrea Lake and Smith’s Settlement areas. It brings in about $10,000 a year. Councillor David Hendsbee led a discussion of the coming vote at the May 15thmeeting of the Musquodoboit Harbour & Area Chamber of Commerce & Civic Affairs.

May 29, 2019

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Gold Fever Heating Up

By Richard Bell Gold companies are stumbling over themselves staking claims across vast swathes of central Nova Scotia. The gold at stake is disseminated gold, in particles largely invisible to the naked eye. But by using open-pit mining and a water/cyanide-based extraction process, companies can make big profits with gold selling at over $1,000 per ounce, provided that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency approves all the proposed mines, and no significant local opposition develops.

May 29, 2019

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DFO Minister May Ban Fish Farms in MPAs

By Richard Bell In a surprise visit to the Eastern Shore on Wednesday, May 8, Jonathan Wilkinson, the current Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, indicated that he was seriously considering a radical change in DFO’s entire approach to the hotly contested Eastern Shore Islands Marine Protected Area (ESI-MPA): co-management with communities. He noted several times during the course of the 90-minute meeting that the entire ESI-MPA proposal might never happen.

May 29, 2019

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C&D Dump Appeal Update

[Editor’s Note: On April 4, the HRM Harbour East Marine Drive Community Council (HEMDC) voted unanimously to accept an HRM staff report recommending against rezoning a parcel of land along Highway 7 in Porters Lake to use as a construction & demolition (C&D) processing site. But Lawrence Bellefontaine’s Kiann Management Ltd. then appealed this decision to the Utility and Review Board (URB). Use the search engine on the Cooperator website for articles on this long struggle, which began in 2015. Just click on the looking glass in the upper right corner.]

May 29, 2019

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Porters Lake Businesses to Vote on BID

Business owners in the proposed Porters Lake Business Improvement District (BID) will be voting this month on whether to create the BID. There will be a public information meeting for these business owners on Wednesday, June 12th at 6:30pm at the Lake & Shore Community Centre. Every property owner and every business owner gets a single vote; voting is by secret ballot, and ballots are due by Friday, June 21st. The proposal must get 50%+1 in order to go into effect.

May 29, 2019

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Selecting a New High School Site

By Richard Bell Bits and pieces of the Department of Education’s new school siting policy are finally beginning to dribble into view, more than a year after Minister Zach Churchill announced that the province would be building a replacement for Eastern Shore District High School.

May 29, 2019

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What is Atlantic Gold Afraid Of?

By Richard Bell As the June issue of the Cooperator was heading to the printers, we got word that an RCMP officer had violently arrested a local environmentalist who was attending a public meeting that Atlantic Gold had called in Sherbrooke on Thursday, May 23 to do a presentation on the disposal of mine tailings, the massive amounts of material left over after gold has been extracted from the pulverized rock. The failure of tailings dams at mining sites around the world has been the cause of massive environmental damage and the deaths of people living downstream from the tailings dams.

May 29, 2019

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Making Trails for our Shared Future

By Mona Bordage People in the Gaetz Brook area might have noticed recent changes on the path behind the Legion. Shore Active Transportation Association (SATA) Trails volunteers have been out in force raking and clearing brush along the Gaetz Brook Greenway despite cold rainy spring weather. Under a letter of authority from the Department of Natural Resources, SATA is restoring the rail bed through Gaetz Brook to be used as an “active transportation” (AT) trail, a trail that will be open to bikers and walkers, but closed to motorized vehicles. (See “Overflow Crowd at ATV Meeting” in this issue for a different perspective.)

May 29, 2019

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