Photo by Michael Bruce Stevens, Antigonish

The twinning of Highway 104 at Antigonish includes infilling 7 hectares of wetland and 15 water course alteration. The Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (TIR) is required to develop and implement a Wetlands and Fish Habitat Compensation plan in order to compensate for the impact on the disturbed wetlands and fish bearing streams, which must be approved by Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). TIR has proposed to compensate by creating new wetland and enhancing existing wetland and fish habitat in a 26 hectare study area located at Antigonish Landing and at several locations within the Brierly Brook and West River watersheds. That proposal is available here. Be patient, it is a large file and it takes a long time to download.

Information on the project can be found in this Powerpoint presentation, which includes many photos and maps of the area. Again, a large file that takes a while to download.

An Open House will be held at the Millenium Centre at ST FX on May 18, 2011 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM. At the Open House, the consultants and TIR staff working on the compensation project will be available to answer questions you may have, and they would be very happy to hear your comments and suggestions. There will be a presentation given at 4:30 PM and again at 6:30 PM, after which there will be a question and answer period. People attending will have opportunity to discuss the wetlands compensation project one-on-one with the people involved.