Great Recycling and Northern Development Canal - Environmental Concerns

Environmental Concerns

Some potential environmental impacts of this proposal that would require study prior to its implementation include:

1. Later ice formation, and earlier ice breakup outside the dike corresponding to an opposite change in the fresh waters inside;
2. Diminished ecological productivity, possibly as far away as the Labrador Sea;
3. Fewer nutrients being deposited into Hudson Bay during spring melts;
4. Removal of James Bay's dampening effect on tidal and wind disturbances; and
5. Adversely affected migratory bird populations.

The reduced freshwater flow into Hudson Bay will alter the salinity and stratification of the bay, possibly impacting primary production in Hudson Bay, along the Labrador coast, and as far away as the fishing grounds in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the Scotian Shelf, and Georges Bank.

If the James Bay dike is built, "irtually all marine organisms would be destroyed ". Freshwater species would move in, but northern reservoirs tend to fail to produce viable fisheries. The inter-basin connections would be ideal vectors for invasive species to invade new waters.

The construction of a dike across James Bay could negatively impact many mammal species, including ringed and bearded seals, walruses, and bowhead whales, as well as vulnerable populations of polar bears and beluga whales. The impacts would also affect many species of migratory bird, including lesser snow geese, Canada geese, black scoters, brants, American black ducks, northern pintails, mallards, American wigeons, Green-winged teals, greater scaups, common eiders, red knots, dunlins, black-bellied, American goldens, and semipalmated plovers, greater and lesser yellowlegs, sanderlings, many species of sandpipers, whimbrels, and marbled godwits, as well as the critically endangered Eskimo curlew.