Protesters build permanent structure, plan to overwinter at Alton Gas site

Spokesperson for natural gas storage project says house built on company land without permission

By Nina Corfu, CBC News, Dec 19, 2017

With second-floor sleeping bunks, shelves stocked with food and a crackling fire in the woodstove, Dale Andrew Poulette’s newly constructed straw bale home is the perfect place to spend the winter.

Sipekne’katik band prepared for long protest at AltaGas site

Band member Cheryl Maloney says the sit-in won’t end until the work stops and a court appeal of the environmental permits is completed. (Robert Short/CBC)

‘We’ve started to allow big business to dictate how our environment is going to be,’ resident says

By Paul Palmeter, CBC News, September 29, 2016

Indigenous people and other residents near Stewiacke, N.S., aren’t backing down in their opposition to a Calgary company’s plans for a natural gas storage site in the area.

About a dozen people including Sipekne’katik band members began a sit-in Monday in the area where AltaGas plans to store natural gas in three underground salt caverns near the Shubenacadie River.

Mi’kmaq protesters block entrance at proposed Alton gas storage site

By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press, September 26, 2016

Mi’kmaq protesters are blocking access to a construction site near proposed natural gas storage caverns in Nova Scotia, saying the project threatens a tidal river that passes through their traditional lands.

Mi’kmaq set up camp against AltaGas storage facility

The Canadian Press, September 12, 2016

STEWIACKE, N.S. — The RCMP says it is staying “neutral” as AltaGas Ltd. and Mi’kmaq protesters are at odds over aboriginal presence on a tiny island near the energy company’s proposed underground natural gas storage caverns.

Opponents of the Alton storage project briefly went out Sunday to the small island that formed where the tidal Shubenacadie River meets a channel in which briny water is to be discharged.