Story and photos by Jim Brown

A major construction project is taking shape on Highway 2, in Hunter River near the Irving station. It’s a new bridge crossing the Clyde River. An environmentally-friendly reusable temporary bridge has been moved into place to handle the traffic while the bridge is under construction. Traffic for much of the summer is expected to be congested near the site. Fortunately, volumes are down because of the pandemic and closed borders to much of rest of the country and the United States. Construction began in late June and the new bridge should be finished by sometime in October.

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Story and photos by Jim Brown

It wasn’t exactly a slam dunk, but it came pretty close to it.

There was little opposition at a July 2 public meeting to Raspberry Point Oyster Company’s plans to build a new 32,000 sq. foot oyster processing facility on 30 acres of land fronting Hope River in Cavendish. The building would replace an existing facility on Cavendish Road at the former Fiddles and Vittles family restaurant.

Raspberry Point’s plan also includes a commercial orchard with 6,000 apple trees on the property and the first harvest is expected in 2023.

Only 12 people showed up at the Tourism Information Centre to hear the plans, which included a request for a major height variance. The total cost is pegged at between $2 to $3 million.

Among the attendees was Resort Municipality Mayor Matthew Jelley and James Power, Raspberry Point’s general manager.

The deadline for submissions on the proposal is July 14.

“We take the oysters out of New London Bay, take them up to the processing plant and basically wash them, grade them, box them and ship them out. So there’s no cooking and shucking of oysters,” said Mr Power.

“The hours would be the same as they are now (five days a week). Right now we’re running 7 am to 4:30 pm. As far as the traffic, at the moment we have about two tractor trailers a day to pick up product, so that possibly could be between two and four (when new building constructed). We also have three and five tonne box trucks and they come two to four times a day as well and they have staff (and their trucks), which would be between 15 and 25 depending on the time of day.”

Mr Power said Raspberry Point was doing about 50 per cent of pre-Covid business.

“We’re hoping in the future that we will actually expand our business and possibly have four trucks instead of two.”

A woman at the meeting asked whether water views would be affected, stressing she doesn’t have a problem with the project herself, but was only asking on behalf of neighbours.

Mr Power reassured her that wouldn’t be a problem with the building.

Don Maynard, Senior Environmental Specialist at Granville Ridge Consulting Inc., presented an overview during the environmental assessment portion of the Resort Municipality meeting.

“Presently the property it is going to be constructed on is under agricultural cultivation” with past crops including soybeans and grains, said Mr Maynard.

Since the apple orchard would require the use of pesticides a 15 metre provincially mandated environment buffer zone will be needed. There would also be wind speed restrictions.

Site preparation for the plant would run through July and August, with the construction phase running from August to October, 2021.

Mr Maynard said the proposed access road to the new facility has already been surveyed and approved by the Department of Transportation, Construction and Energy.

Referring to the orchard part of the proposal (southern end of the property) Mr Maynard noted, “apples are a crop requiring fertilization, physical maintenance, a lot of grass cutting between the rows (and) pruning…”

There are no plans to irrigate the orchard with water from wells.

In the case of the oyster processing facility an exploration permit under the Provincial Groundwater Protection Act is needed to install a well to provide water for two grading/washing machines.

The permit process is needed to ensure water supplies aren’t depleted in the aquifer for other users.
“Our water is very precious, that’s like gold now,” said the woman, a lone member of the public. She stressed she understood the water was needed to wash oysters, but she was concerned about too much usage.

Mayor Jelley noted the old Fiddles and Vittles facility had a similar well to what was being constructed at the new location and confirmed the new well would be about the same capacity. He went on to say a permit for the extraction process has to be approved by the provincial environment department.

“I have two high capacity wells myself and I get an email every month asking for my meter readings and they are monitoring the usage…So it’s pretty well regulated, at least in my own experience.”

Mr Power, in response to a question from a resident on the video link, said there are no plans at the moment for what to do with the old processing facility at the former Fiddles and Vittles site, once the new building is completed.

All told, three phone calls were received at the Resort Municipality office and one in-person visit regarding the Raspberry Point proposal.