Activist charged with assaulting mayor in historic town’s sewage feud
LUNENBURG, N.S. — Standing on the bow of his fishing boat, Bill Flower only has to look down to see a thick brown sludge belch out of a municipal wastewater pipe and into one of Canada’s most iconic harbours.
The fetid material burbles across the rocks under one of Lunenburg’s busiest wharfs and flows into the sea, coating boats, their ropes and most anything that comes in contact with it in a sticky film.
For Flower, who also runs a tour boat company and often has his hands covered in the slime, the fact that sewage flows freely into the harbour of a picturesque town deemed a UNESCO world heritage site and home to Canada’s most famous sailing ship, the Bluenose II, is a maddening reality he’s vowed to change.
“It’s dangerous and bad for the environment and I’m handling it everyday — it’s disgusting,” he said in an interview. “We’ve had improperly treated sewage pumping underneath that wharf for 15 years and it’s gotten worse and worse as the volume of people increase, especially in the summertime when it stinks like hell.”