As a co-applicant in a judicial review for the proposed snowmobile grooming hub project at Mount Carleton Provincial Park, I was pleased to hear that the Department of Tourism had decided to register this project for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). An EIA means that Tourism would need to explain what negative impacts the grooming hub might have had on the park. But,  somehow Tourism received permission from the Department of Environment to have two of the 12 components of this project exempted from their EIA registration document—the bridge at the ford between Bathurst Lake and Camp Lake and the other at Moose Brook. This means that the EIA for this project has been irreconcilably compromised.  Note that in every deliberation we have had with Tourism on this project, the bridges have always been presented to us as being important components of the snowmobile grooming hub.  So, when Chief Ron Tremblay and I met with the Department of Environment to find out how it happened that the bridges had been exempted, we learned that the decision Environment made was based on the information that they had received, and that whether or not that information was correct was immaterial. It has therefore been extremely disappointing for us to learn that the bridge work at Mount Carleton has now been allowed to start. Our take home lesson is that it appears that New Brunswick’s EIA regulations can be tampered with and that whenever this happens, there is no remedy.

New Brunswickers are invited to read the Environmental Impact Assessment document for the snowmobile grooming hub project and to please make their comments/concerns known to both the Department of Tourism and Department of Environment.  A pdf of this report may be found on the web at: http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/env/pdf/EIA-EIE/Registrations-Engegistrements/documents/EIARegistration1444.pdf

Jean Louis Deveau
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