Opposition

Environmental Assessment Comment: Salt Springs Natural Gas Facility

Submitted by: Donna Maxwell, Sixth-Generation Resident, Salt Springs

My home sits less than one kilometre from where this proposed industrial facility would be built. I am writing not as an expert in energy policy or environmental science, but as someone whose family has lived on this land for eight generations—long enough to understand what we stand to lose.

I am a direct descendant of James Barry of Six Mile Brook, whose music and diaries now rest in the Nova Scotia Archives, studied by those interested in our province's cultural heritage. James Barry spent his life in Six Mile Brook as a Miller, operating the grist mill, composing music, building the first printing press in the area, binding books, and documenting his life in detailed diaries. My ancestors cleared this land, farmed it, raised their families here, and are buried in its soil. Their voices are in the wind that moves through these trees. Their lives are woven into every brook and hillside. This is not a metaphor—it is the lived truth of deep roots. There are now eight generations of our family here—I am the sixth, my daughter is the seventh, and my grandchildren are the eighth.

I was born here in the 1950s. I have spent my entire life in this community, raised my own family here, and dedicated my career to educating children in these schools. I have watched this place change over the decades, and I understand what has been lost when development comes without wisdom or restraint. I have also witnessed what endures when we protect what matters.

What This Place Means

Six Mile Brook is where generations of children in this community learned to swim, fish, and sit quietly and watch the great blue heron hunt in the shallows. It is where we learned reverence for clean water and living things. The wetlands surrounding this proposed site are not empty space waiting for development—they are home to black ducks that return each spring, to wood ducks nesting in the trees along the water's edge, to kingfishers diving for fish in waters my grandparents knew, to tree swallows that fill the summer air, and to ecosystems that have functioned here far longer than any of us have been alive.

The stillness here is not the absence of life—it is the presence of peace that rural communities are built on. The quiet is not silence—it is the sound of wind in maple leaves, of water over stone, of songbirds at dawn. This is what people come to rural Nova Scotia to experience. This is what those of us who live here have protected for generations. This is what would be irrevocably altered by an industrial power plant operating less than one kilometre from homes where families have lived for nearly 250 years.

The Breaking of Trust

When I established my home here, I did so with the understanding that this was residential rural land, protected by zoning from industrial development. This was not naïve hope—it was the legal framework governing land use in our community. I invested my life savings in a home in a place I loved, confident that the zoning protections meant something. I planned for this home to carry me through retirement and hold the value I had worked my entire life to build.

Now, at this stage of my life, I find myself facing the prospect of an industrial facility that will eliminate that value overnight. I have no means to relocate. I have nowhere else to go. This is my home, and I am being asked to accept its destruction—not for the good of my community, which opposes this project, but for the profit of interests that have no connection to this place and no regard for those of us who live here.

This is more than financial harm. It is a betrayal of the fundamental promise that zoning laws exist to protect residents like me from exactly this kind of industrial imposition.

The Absence of Representation

Our local MLA now serves as Assistant to the Minister of Energy—the very minister advancing these projects. Where does that leave us? Who speaks for Salt Springs when our elected representative reports directly to the person advancing this proposal? I have voted in every election, participated in my community, and trusted that democratic representation meant something. Now I feel powerless, watching decisions made far from here by people who will never live with the consequences.

This facility will not make our homes more affordable. It will not employ our neighbours for decades. It will not improve our lives in any measurable way. It will bring noise, light pollution, air emissions, truck traffic, and industrial operations to a residential community of families who chose to live here specifically because it was not an industrial area.

What This Represents

I am trying to speak calmly about something that breaks my heart. This project represents profound disrespect—for this place, for the people who have cared for it across generations, for those who came before us, and for those who should inherit it after we are gone. It prioritizes short-term profit over long-term stewardship. It reflects the view that rural communities and rural people matter less, and that our homes and our heritage are acceptable sacrifices for projects that could be located in already-industrialized areas with proper infrastructure.

There are existing power generation sites in Nova Scotia—facilities with gas pipelines already in place, transmission lines already built, industrial zoning already established, and communities already adapted to that reality. Those sites make sense. This does not. The only explanation for choosing Salt Springs over those alternatives is that we are seen as having less power to resist. That is not planning. That is exploitation.

The Question I Cannot Answer

How do I explain to my granddaughter that the brook where her mother learned to swim, where I learned to swim, and where my mother learned to swim is now in the shadow of an industrial power plant? How do I tell her that the peace her ancestors protected for six generations was sold in a process announced three days before Christmas, with a February deadline? How do I help her understand that the home her family built, the land her family tended, and the community her family sustained were considered acceptable collateral damage?

I have spent my life as an educator, teaching children to value this province, understand its history, care for its environment, and participate in democracy. I do not know how to reconcile those lessons with what is happening here.

My Request

I am asking—pleading—for this proposal to be rejected. Not because I oppose energy development in principle, but because this is the wrong location, chosen for the wrong reasons, through the wrong process. There are better sites. There are better alternatives. There are better ways to plan our energy future that do not require sacrificing residential communities that have endured for generations.

If those making this decision have any regard for rural Nova Scotians, any respect for heritage and continuity, or any understanding that some places deserve protection from industrial development, please look at Salt Springs and see what I see. See the legacy of James Barry become eight generations in Six Mile Brook. See clean water and thriving wetlands. See a community that has cared for this land and been sustained by it. See people who deserve better than to be told their homes and heritage are expendable.

This is not just land. This is not just property value. This is the place my family has called home since before Canada was a country. It deserves more consideration than it has received. We deserve more respect than we have been shown.

I am one person, one voice, one vote. I am speaking for my ancestors who cannot speak, for my grandchildren who will inherit whatever we leave them, and for this land that has given my family everything.

Please do not allow this to proceed.

Respectfully submitted,

Donna Maxwell
Sixth-generation resident, Salt Springs, Nova Scotia