For Immediate Release
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
For a New Earth announces its endorsement of soil removal at Muskrat Falls
ST. JOHN’S –Local ecological NPO For A New Earth (FANE) hereby announces its public endorsement of the recommendations recently issued by the Independent Expert Advisory Committee (IEAC) for the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project that call for further soil removal and capping of wetlands in the future reservoir area. FANE’s position is that anything less than these actions poses unacceptable risk to human health.
Environmental research has shown that the mitigations measures of methyl mercury originally defined were left incomplete in the original environmental assessment. The bio-accumulation of methyl mercury can cause neurological damage in vertebrates and notably humans. The Government and Nalcor must thus accept these costs as a part of the necessary course of action for Muskrat Falls.
The original Environmental Assessment did not address downstream effects despite being recommended to do so by the joint panel Overseeing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Furthermore, the World Commission On Dams had already published findings noting that some of the major negative effects of dams on the ecosystems downstream. FANE’s position is that Nalcor’s ongoing claim that there would be no adverse environmental effects in completing the Muskrat Falls project is false.
To adequately incorporate and engineer solutions to adverse environmental effects have real costs. Those costs are now a matter of public knowledge.
FANE is seeking further information detailing the exact mitigating measures proposed by the IEAC, including volumes and locations of soil to be removed, and surface areas, locations and techniques for “capping” wetlands, presumably to make an impermeable barrier to the inundating waters of the flooding reservoir. It is also interested in planning a public discussion on this issue in the near future.
For further information, please contact:
Sean McGrath, FANE Co-Director, sjoseph.mcgrath@gmail.com, (709) 864-2668