Quote from Steve MacLellan on June 24, 2026, 3:42 pm

The new natural gas and diesel power plants that are on the horizon for Pictou County will not draw or discharge water at an industrial scale, the grid operator has decided.

The shift to a so-called dry system comes 10 months after plans for two gas-fired plants were made public. The proposals swiftly drew criticism from locals and organizations who highlighted potential negative environmental impacts.

Among their concerns were that aquifers that feed residential wells would be drained, and that ecosystems supported by local wetlands, brooks and rivers would be irreparably altered.

Under the original proposal, at peak operations, each 300-megawatt plant would have drawn 175,000 litres of water per hour from deep wells and used it to cool the system and quell air emissions. Much of the water would have turned into steam, but the process would have also created wastewater — 50,000 litres per hour at peak.

The wastewater would have gone through a “neutralization system” and then into nearby watercourses.

The exact technology that will be used will depend on the proposals that are submitted, Milligan said. He confirmed that some dry technologies use ammonia instead of water, but he said he does not expect there to be any discharge of ammonia into any nearby watersheds.

Matt Russell, a marine ecologist and the Nova Scotia program director for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, said he also would not expect ammonia to be intentionally discharged into the environment, but he’s worried about “mistakes.”

“Spills happen.… Very small amounts can have massive impacts, especially when we’re at one of the most critical junctures of the entire system,” he said, referring to the East and West River watersheds, which encompass the proposed sites.

The rivers and their tributaries both provide habitat to Atlantic salmon, and Russell said there are “core spawning and rearing grounds” less than a kilometre from where the plants could be built. |Read more|