The National Farmers Union in New Brunswick (NFU-NB) said on Nov. 7 that it is concerned by the Government of New Brunswick’s recent Request for Proposals (RFP) for potash exploration in the Salt Springs and Cassidy Lakes areas, noting the RFP covers 26,350 hectares and the land is mostly privately owned (GM Oct. 28, p. 1).
It added that exploration and potential resource extraction will occur on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of Indigenous Peoples who should have stewardship over the land and water.
The NFU-NB is concerned about impacts to farms during exploration and long-term effects to farmland should extraction proceed. It said mining exploration can cause significant damage to farms before permission from landowners is required or any large equipment is brought onsite. It said it did not want to see further agricultural land lost in New Brunswick in the future.
Although potash is primarily used in fertilizer, NFU-NB said that what was extracted from the province in the past was mainly exported. It said this potential extraction will likely have little benefit to the farms and people of New Brunswick, in part because potash mines today require few new employees to run.
NFU-NB said farmers are already concerned about New Brunswick’s water tables, and that potash extraction uses and damages this resource. It said the former Nutrien Ltd. mine extracted an average of 11 million liters of water from the Penobsquis aquifer each day. It said an Aquifer Vulnerability Assessment conducted by the Royal District Planning Commission in 2012 reported that groundwater from Grand Lake to the Bay of Fundy is vulnerable to contamination.
The group said some 60 homes in Penobsquis reported losing their water supply after the mining activities began. It also said there was displacement of buildings and land, productive fields became too wet to farm, and there were fears that wastewater was not properly treated. It said properties were devalued, sinkholes appeared, and questions raised about human health concerns were never addressed.