AltaGas’s planned natural gas storage project will produce brine with salinity levels six times higher than what’s considered harmful to fish, according to newly released documents.

The company plans to dilute that brine in a mixing zone next to the Shubenacadie River.

But according to an Environment and Climate Change Canada scientist, fish could still be exposed to unsafe salinity levels. #StopAltonGas #nspoli

RCMP have closed a rural road north of Halifax where protesters
are blocking the site of a controversial natural gas project at Fort
Ellis.

The blockade was set up more than two years ago by
Indigenous protesters opposed to a plan by Alton Gas to create large
underground caverns to store natural gas.

The protesters are
worried the nearby Shubenacadie River will be polluted if the company
moves ahead with its plan to flush out underground salt deposits and
then dump the brine into the river.

Margaret Miller released her decision Monday as part of a review
sparked by the first nation’s appeal of the province’s industrial
approval for the Alton Gas project near Shubenacadie.

Miller also determined the province’s terms and conditions are sufficient to protect the environment.

Alton Gas
plans to store natural gas in underground caverns located north of
Halifax at Fort Ellis. The company plans to pump water from the Shubenacadie River to an underground site 12 kilometres away, where it will be used to flush out salt deposits and create up to 15 caverns.

The leftover brine solution would then be pumped back into the river over two or three years.

Striped bass is an endangered species under the Committee on the Status
of Endagered Wildlife in Canada, and the Shubenacadie River is the last
striped bass spawning ground in Nova Scotia. Five thousand First Nations
and non-Native anglers in the province fish striped bass for food and
recreation.