This article was in the Toronto Star Paper - July26,2003...
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Digby Neck on the line
Planned quarry threatens a scenic Nova Scotia area
Opponents say fishing and a way of life under siege
KELLY TOUGHILL
ATLANTIC CANADA BUREAU
WHITE'S COVE, N.S.More than 150 hectares of the most scenic shoreline in Nova Scotia
may soon be ground into gravel under a New Jersey family's ambitious business plan to
pave more roads in the United States.
If members of the Clayton family have been here, they would have seen how the wind whips the wildflowers into a kaleidoscope of colour along the shore of Digby Neck peninsula, how the laurel and bluebells, the daisies and buttercups, thistle and clover cling to the grey rocks at the edge of a pounding blue sea. But the rock is basalt, the sharp-edged remnants of a lava flow that is perfect for making asphalt and concrete paving.
If the Claytons get their way and it looks like they will one of the largest quarries on the East Coast will soon spring up near one of the tiniest and prettiest fishing villages in the Maritimes. The plan is to strip the trees from a section of coast the size of Toronto's High Park, then blast, grind and ship about two million tonnes of crushed rock from the shore of the Bay of Fundy every year.
The quarry will provide no royalties. It threatens to destroy fishing grounds and create only a mere jobs, but until recently, it looked like nothing could stop the bulldozers. The local member of the Nova Scotia legislature has taken a hand's-off approach, as have the premier and the environment minister.
Two weeks ago, local residents fighting the project finally found an ally: Federal Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault requested a formal review of the project, which could delay blasting for at least a year.
The fight in Digby Neck has drawn together an unusual coalition of local residents who say not just their way of life, but their livelihoods are at stake. Their fight has helped heal the rift between native and non-native fishermen who fought violent battles over lobster resources in nearby St. Mary's Bay just two years ago, and forged new friendships between summer residents and those who count their time in the area by generations, not mere years.
Project engineer Paul Buxton says the fight is a classic one of change versus jobs, that the residents who now oppose the project will be its biggest boosters in just a few years.
But that's not the way Rick Klein sees it. He says unlike many development battles, this project is going to cost the area jobs, not bring them more.
Klein is a newcomer to Digby Neck. The former Washington, D.C., transit official fell in love with the area when a realtor refused to show him a listing because she was going out fishing.
"Have you ever heard of a real estate agent refusing to show a property? Have you ever heard of a real estate agent caring about anything more than the almighty buck?" he asks as he bounces down a rough road toward the quarry in his old four-wheel-drive Chevy.
"I knew right away there was something different about this place."
It is different. Even by the high standards of the Maritimes, the skinny peninsula called Digby Neck in southwestern Nova Scotia is extraordinarily beautiful, and extraordinarily empty, populated by a string of small villages clustered on either side of a high hill that runs down the peninsula like a bony spine.
On one side is the Bay of Fundy, a vast bay with the world's highest tides, summer home to endangered whales, which come to feed their newborn calves in its cold waters. On the other side is St. Mary's Bay, a shallow, warmer bay of clam beds and lobster boats.
The quarry is slated for White's Cove, an abandoned fishing village at the end of a treacherous dirt road that snakes over the hill from Little River, a tiny town of 100-year-old homes clustered around a wharf built in the shadow of a high rock cliff.
Digby Neck doesn't usually get much attention from the outside world. There are the tourists who come to see the rare right whales, the fishermen and their kin, and the virtual visitors who have read Fog Magic, a beloved 1946 children's book set in the same abandoned fishing village where the quarry is slated to go.
It is a little eerie to visit White's Cove after reading Fog Magic, to spot the cellar holes just as they are described in the magical tale, to see the thick steel rings driven into the rock that fishermen once used to haul their boats to land.
These days, the hill and clearing have already been stripped bare in anticipation of blasting, and a sharp tang of spruce sap hangs over the cove, the pungent reminder of thousands of trees scraped from the rock.
If approved, the quarry will cover 153 hectares, almost exactly the size of High Park.
It will ship three times more rock to the United States than the largest quarry in nearby Maine, which prides itself on its rock production. The only way the quarry makes economic sense is if the rock can be shipped by superfreighter.
That, says Buxton, is where Paul Martin's old company, Canada Steamship Lines, comes in. In its official proposal, Global Quarry Products, the Nova Scotia company behind the quarry project, suggests using CSL to ship the crushed basalt to the United States. The former finance minister, who is almost sure to become prime minister, has no direct involvement any longer with CSL, but Buxton is careful to make sure all officials and reporters know there is a Martin connection.
"Of course we want to use a Canadian company," he says. "We have talked to CSL, but nothing is signed yet."
Buxton is a little touchy about the Canadian aspects of the project. Although the quarry project is spearheaded by a company registered in the province and Buxton is the public face of the project, he says both ownership and control go straight back to the United States.
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`I knew right away there was something different about this place'
Rick Klein, a newcomer to Digby Neck
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The land is owned by two couples from North Carolina and the Nova Scotia company is controlled by the Clayton Group, a privately owned web of companies that includes one of the largest concrete manufacturers in the United States.
No one from the Clayton Group returned the Star's request for an interview about the project.
Buxton accuses the quarry opponents of fear-mongering, saying their tales of a ruined economy, ruined environment and damaged water supply are poppycock. There are already several quarries on Digby Neck, he points out.
That comparison irritates his opponents, who point out that all of those quarries are tiny compared with the White's Cove proposal, less than one-tenth the size. So far, Buxton has found few public supporters on the Neck, where "Stop The Quarry" signs are prominent on driveways all along the major road.
Kemp Stanton has been setting his traps in White's Cove all his life, just as his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather did before him.
If the cove gets a massive new wharf and huge freighters start moving in and out, the traps will have to go, he says.
If he moves his traps to another cove, that will crowd out other fishermen. More than 40 boats fish in the waters affected by the new shipping, he says, and those boats employ more than 120 people.
The quarry controversy is not a matter of jobs versus the environment, he insists, not at all. He argues as many do here that even if the quarry adds a few dozen new jobs, it will destroy hundreds more.
There are only two ways to make money on Digby Neck: One is to take tourists out to see whales in the summer; the other is to fish.
Whale researchers have warned that sound from the blasting could travel through the water and alter the migration pattern of the sound-sensitive whales.
Stanton believes the same thing will happen with lobster, that the underwater tremors caused by on-shore blasting will drive them away from the coast, and spell ruin for the hundreds of fishermen and crew who depend on the tasty crustaceans for their living.
Buxton dismisses the fears of seismic pollution, pointing out that the project will follow all federal and provincial regulations on blasting.
Then there is the issue of the wells.
Fresh water supplies are fragile on the Neck, with water filtering through the tiny cracks of the basalt mountain in unpredictable patterns.
Buxton says the company will drill a new well for anyone whose water supply is affected by the blasting.
Finally, there is the issue of royalties. Nova Scotia, unlike Ontario and some other provinces, charges no royalties on construction stone. Taxpayers won't get a dime from the massive quarry project.
It is the never-again stuff that gets Stanton the most.
He lives in the home where he grew up, high on North Mountain, overlooking both the rugged open seas of the Bay of Fundy and the sheltered waters of St. Mary's Bay.
"Anybody who enjoys hearing birds chirping, frogs peeping, you won't hear that any more," he says.
He worries that owls will no longer be able to hear their prey scurrying in the dark, because of noise from the quarry's crushers, that silt runoff from the project will foul the seaweed, driving away the herring that are the lure for whales.
He worries that the lobster will vanish, and he will be driven into poverty.
"It is sad to me that when I'm done, anybody who comes after me won't be able to see what I have seen," Stanton says.
"I could go out to the cove at night and hear the herring flapping, could catch a fish off a wharf. With the lights from the quarry, I won't even be able to see the stars at night. If I walk along the cove, I have always been able to go to any stream and drink the water. It's that pure.
"It's this never-again stuff that gets to me. All this, never again."
