Midgic resident Andy Mills

Midgic resident Andy Mills urged Tantramar Town Council Tuesday to maintain a united front against NB Power’s plan for a 500 MW gas/diesel generating plant near Centre Village.

“This is a thing of nightmares. Toxins from that gas plant will spread far and wide and   everybody will be subject to poor air quality and increased pollution,” he said during a five-minute presentation on behalf of the group Seniors for Climate — Tantramar.

He said people outside of Centre Village may think the plant won’t affect them.

“It will because the winds blow in all different directions and as soon as it starts blowing over here, you’re going to be feeling it,” he said, adding that various experts, including the the lung association and more than 300 doctors at the Georges Dumont Hospital have expressed their opposition to the Tantramar gas plant.

Wouldn’t have moved to Midgic

Mills said he wouldn’t have moved to Midgic in 2021 if he had known that a plant with 10 fossil-fuel-burning jet engines would be built within seven kilometres of his home.

Councillor Kristen LeBlanc, who represents Ward 4 which includes Centre Village, said she probably wouldn’t have relocated to the area with her family either if she had known about the proposed gas plant.

When she pointed out that both the current council and the previous one passed motions opposing the plant, Mills referred indirectly to the mayor’s post on Facebook after the province granted its approval for the project.

In that post, Debbie Wiggins-Colwell called on the town to move forward in the expectation that the 45 conditions the province had imposed would address all public concerns about its potential health, safety and environmental effects.

“I’m not picking on anybody in particular, that’s not what I’m here for,” Mills said. “But we need to have a united front because the thing I see is if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

‘Bushwacked’

In September, a motion to remove the mayor’s statement was defeated in a tied vote.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Mills referred to a part of her statement in which Wiggins-Colwell urged “residents to rely on official sources of information for updates” as the project goes ahead.

“Instructing the citizens who live here to refer to official sources for their information is ridiculous,” he said. “NB Power and PROENERGY have lied from the get-go to all of us.”

He accused the power utility and the American company of springing the project on local people without consulting them.

“We all got bushwhacked on this thing,” Mills said. “Well, enough is enough. We need to fight back.”