SHERBROOKE – After juggling three separate northeastern Nova Scotia gold mine proposals for nearly a decade, Australian company St Barbara Ltd. is back with a single, redesigned project that it says reflects years of environmental revisions, engineering work and public feedback.
The initial project description for the proposal to consolidate the former Fifteen Mile Stream, Beaver Dam and Cochrane Hill developments under a new banner – the 15-Mile Processing Hub Project – was submitted to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada on June 2. The project entered the federal planning phase on June 17, when the agency invited Indigenous Peoples and the public to submit comments by July 7 before deciding the next stage of the environmental assessment process.
Specifically, it would see ore from the renamed Old Austen Mine, formerly Beaver Dam near Sheet Harbour in Halifax Regional Municipality, and Old Mitchell Mine, formerly Cochrane Hill near Sherbrooke in the Municipality of the District of St. Mary’s, transported to the 15-Mile Mine near Sheet Harbour for processing, with tailings stored there as well.
But one of the area’s longest-serving opponents of St Barbara’s gold mining plans – which also includes restarting processing operations later this year at its Touquoy mine in Moose River – says many residents are only now learning of the consultation, leaving little time to review and comment on a project of this scale before federal officials decide how it will proceed through the environmental assessment process.
“Mega gold project 2.0 is here,” Scott Beaver said in an email to The Journal June 26. Beaver, president of the conservation group the St. Mary’s River Association and a councillor for the Municipality of the District of St. Mary’s, added: “With the renaming tactic it looks like the old bait and switch maneuver to me.… This comment period is the only opportunity to help ensure this project receives both a federal and provincial assessment.”
Millions of tonnes and dollars at stake
According to the initial project description, the project would operate for about 11 years, process roughly three million tonnes of ore annually and produce approximately 103,000 ounces of gold each year. St Barbara estimates it would create about 1,600 construction jobs and 950 operating jobs, generate roughly $559 million in municipal, provincial and federal tax revenue, and contribute about $5 billion to Nova Scotia’s economy over the life of the project.
In a June 19 news release, St Barbara managing director Andrew Strelein called the filing “a major milestone” following nearly three years of redesign work that he said resulted in “a project that is both more acceptable and more beneficial for the communities.”
Strelein also welcomed the recently signed Nova Scotia-Canada Cooperation Agreement supporting a “one project, one review” approach, saying “a streamlined, robust and defensible regulatory process is critical to ensuring efficient decision-making, while maintaining the highest environmental and community standards.”
Under the agreement, signed in March, governments may conduct a single, harmonized review where appropriate while each retains its own legal decision-making authority.
In written responses to The Journal on Monday (June 29), Dustin O’Leary, St Barbara’s manager of business development for Atlantic operations, said the filing should be understood as the completion of a years-long redesign, not simply a return of the former projects under new names.
Specifically, he said, the three sites are “notably smaller,” prioritize environmental mitigation and social impacts, and include cleanup of historic tailings contamination created by mining practices from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
He said the most significant change at Old Austen and Old Mitchell is that both are now designed as satellite quarry-style pits, with all processing taking place at the 15-Mile site. As a result, he said, no tailings management facility would be placed at either Old Austen or Old Mitchell, and surface-water withdrawals would not be required at either site.
Public comment period key
Among Beaver’s biggest concerns is the crucial, but brief, 20-day public comment period, which precedes the federal government’s decision on how the project will be finally assessed.
“The ‘one project, one review’ model agreement between the province and the federal government may fast track this project through the first phase and onto a provincial assessment only,” he wrote.
O’Leary rejected that concern, saying it misunderstands how federal and provincial permitting of industrial projects is balanced.
He pointed to the cooperation agreement between Ottawa and the province, which says both levels of government have established robust processes for high-quality assessment of some types of projects, informed by science, Indigenous knowledge and community knowledge.
He also said the project would remain subject to federal permitting across all three sites, regardless of which government leads the assessment. That would include Fisheries Act authorizations through the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations Schedule 2 amendments through Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“Therefore, there will be both provincial and federal permitting required for all sites within the 15-Mile Processing Hub,” he said.
Beaver also contends the redesigned proposal leaves a key part of the project outside the environmental assessment: the public roads that would eventually carry ore from the formerly named Beaver Dam and Cochrane Hill mine sites to the 15-Mile processing hub.
“The project development area currently excludes the public roads that would be used,” he wrote, noting that earlier discussions identified Hwy. 7 through Sherbrooke as the preferred haul route, while the company now says it is studying routes to the north, south and west.
“Not including the roads was either intentional or an oversight. Either way, whatever choice is made to haul ore possesses risks for our public roads and for things like tourism and potentially rare species depending on the choice.”
O’Leary said work is still underway to identify the preferred trucking route, which would use existing roadways to transport ore from Old Austen and Old Mitchell to the 15-Mile Processing Hub.
He said St Barbara and third-party experts have been evaluating possible routes through engineering and technical studies, including assessments of road and infrastructure capacity, environmental and social considerations, and baseline traffic conditions. The company has also been engaging with potential haulage contractors, the community liaison committee and other stakeholders, he said.
“Compared with the previous Beaver Dam design, the proposed Old Austen operation results in less than one-third of the trucking volumes contemplated during the previous iteration of the project,” he said.
Engagement and debate ongoing
O’Leary noted that St Barbara – which hosted several community open houses in November – has shared a draft project description with First Nations communities and groups and the community liaison committee before the initial project description was formally submitted, providing additional time for review and feedback. “We have continued to engage with communities throughout the redesign of the projects,” he said.
Still, the proposal is clearly reigniting a dispute that has shaped debate in St. Mary’s for years.
Earlier versions of the Cochrane Hill project drew sustained opposition over potential impacts on the St. Mary’s River watershed, salmon habitat, water withdrawals and mine waste. In 2023, following years of lobbying by the St. Mary’s River Association and others, the province designated much of the watershed off limits to mining, prompting St Barbara to redesign the project by eliminating tailings storage and industrial water withdrawals at Cochrane Hill and shifting processing to the proposed 15-Mile hub.
That hub is now much larger, Beaver insists, “with four pits and significant processing facilities. The sites are starting to be considered as one large project.… I feel that this mega project has been well thought out by the proponent to try and push it through this fast-tracked loophole to a provincial assessment only.”
He added: “If a mega project like this is not federally assessed, then I think it’s safe to assume none [others] like [it] will fall under federal assessment.”
