February 25, 2025
John Cunningham
Warden, Municipality of Yarmouth
Dear John,
I’m writing on behalf of TREPA in regard to the unusual letter sent to NS Mayors and Wardens from John Lohr, Minister of Municipal affairs. He is encouraging all of you to encourage resource development. We call it “resource extraction”. The main purpose of this letter is to encourage you and council to scrutinize resource extraction proposals with an eye to potential negative impacts.
As a TREPA founding member I know of what I write. The RIO Algom tin mine was opened in 1985 and it wasn’t long before leaking from tailings ponds was having a negative impact on the Tusket River water quality. Before long TREPA was registered as a charity and had over 400 members. The situation was remedied after a lot of time spent by concerned volunteers. With more diligent research this environmental disaster could have been prevented.
Switch to today. Tin mine has been closed since 1992. Rio Algom’s successor – BHP, now spends in the order of $1M per year treating and monitoring the water quality. Also, no one can re-open the tin mine unless there is $25M set aside to mitigate environmental damage. TREPA has two representatives on the committee that monitors current activity at the tin mine.
TREPA was created to remedy a damaging situation. Careful and comprehensive scrutiny of future “resource extraction” proposals is encouraged.
Let me know if TREPA can be of any help on this issue.
Yours sincerely
Barrie MacGregor
President