Ocean Spray hopes to start work around Lake Despres by April 1 if they can get approval from the government in time, says a representative for the company working on the assessment.
Jaques Whitford engineering company project manager Denis Deveau attended Wednesday's Miramichi River Environmental Assessment Committee meeting to address concerns about the cranberry operation.
The April goal is the company's ideal time to plant their cranberry vines for this year's growing season, he said.
"This is all contingent on getting our permission and approval in place," Deveau said.
If everything goes as planned, Ocean Spray will initially build on Crown land around the lake in two phases, with the possibility of expanding if things go well.
The operation could eventually create around 50-100 jobs once all the phases are complete and would be one of the largest cranberry operations in North America.
Deveau said part of the first two phases is a plan to dig trenches around the area's peat bogs for use as a canal to flood the cranberry beds several times a year.
"This is how they're going to get water to flood. It's basically a closed loop system."
The cranberry beds will need to be flooded about 14 times a year, including during harvesting and in December to protect them from frost.
Jaques Whitford developed the plan based on figures for a dry year and assumed there would be a need to flood, he said.
"If you lose your crop, you lose your crop and they're expensive."
To get the water they need, Ocean Spray may need to draw it from Lake Despres, but it will be limited in how much they can take to ensure the lake's water level doesn't drop more than 50 centimetres.
Deveau said the ground in the area where Ocean Spray plans to plant their beds is good for cranberries because it retains water.
"They don't need to be wet all the time. They need to be moist."
Ocean Spray registered their environmental impact assessment Dec. 18 and the technical review committee has been sending questions back about the project since then.
The public has until Feb. 21 to comment on the project if they have any concerns about its environmental impact, Deveau said.
"That's basically where we stand on the EIA and its status." One of the questions Jaques Whitford is trying to get answers about is whether or not there are fish in the lakes near the proposed cranberry operation.
Gordon Yamazaki has been working on the company's fish surveys and they have found small populations of fish in some of the area's waterways.
"The flows would be reduced during summer conditions and we don't expect fish to vacate."
They weren't able to get in to South Lake when they were doing their initial surveys and the lake is shallow enough it may be frozen straight through, which means the earliest they will know if there are fish in it is some time in the spring, he said.
"We're out there now, but we're going to have to go out there in the spring anyway."
Yamazaki said one method they have been using is looking for a type of invertebrate found only in places where there aren't any fish. It's a new method in New Brunswick and they still have to use other methods, he said.
"You could not hang an assessment on it." Deveau said another area of concern from the public was pesticide use, but cranberry operations aren't like farms where they use pesticides all the time.
"It's only when there's an issue that you use pesticides here."
Ocean Spray wants to submit their environmental protection plan before they receive government approval of the environmental impact assessment, because they don't want it to delay the project, he said.
"Once it's issued we want to be able to start construction."
But Deveau said how soon they start will depend on when the snow is gone and how wet the area is this spring.
"I guess mother nature will tell us if we'll be in there or not."
No comments:
Post a Comment