Sandy Pond, once a pristine, beautiful lake on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, Canada, now lies within the boundaries of one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest industrial sites.
The VALE nickel processing facility is under construction now at Long Harbour, Newfoundland. The Federal Government of Canada has given VALE, and other mining companies, permission to use healthy bodies of Canadian freshwater lakes and ponds as “tailings impoundment areas” for toxic waste. They achieved this because of a loophole, known as Schedule 2, in the Metal Mining Effluent Regulation (MMER) of the federal Fisheries Act.
In March 2010 the Sandy Pond Alliance launched a legal challenge against the Federal Government of Canada to declare Schedule 2 in violation of the federal Fisheries Act.
The Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice is part of the Sandy Pond Alliance, a coalition of concerned citizens fighting to protect Sandy Pond. The Alliance includes the Council of Canadians, Mining Watch, Nature Canada, the Newfoundland and Labrador Natural History Society, Sierra Club Atlantic, and scientists and activists in Newfoundland who are concerned with the imminent destruction of Sandy Pond.
How It All Began
In May of 2009, the local Chapter of the Council of Canadians organized the Sandy Pond Picnic to bring attention to the issue of the intended destruction of Sandy Pond by the Brazilian mining company Vale Inco as part of their Long Harbour Nickel Processing Plant development. On Friday, May 8, 2009, nearly 20 people visited Long Harbour and trekked into Sandy Pond. After that event several people including activists, academics and community members decided to meet regularly to discuss possible ways to prevent the destruction of Sandy Pond.
Our Mission
1.To protect and conserve Canadian waters and their ecosystems; and
2.To take appropriate actions to assist the Alliance in fulfilling its purpose, including promoting and recommending laws and policies, and informing and engaging the public; and
3.To join and/or co-operate with other organizations or institutions with similar purposes.
Sister Mary Tee RSM, coordinator of the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice in St. Johns, Newfoundland serves on the Board of the Sandy Pond Alliance. This Board is still working to save Sandy Pond. In the event that construction on the nickel processing plant may proceed too quickly to save Sandy Pond before a successful ruling on the legal challenge is obtained there is still the hope of saving other bodies of fresh water from a similar fate by changing the law.
Mary Tee rsm recently visited Sandy Pond and was interviewed for “The Current” on CBC radio.
To hear Mary Tee’s interview, click here
Messages to: Mary Tee rsm
Power lines were felled, leading to loss of electricity so that a sense of complete helplessness settled over the affected areas. By evening the most frightening reality was evident – that hundreds of small rural communities were completely isolated 
as bridges were taken off their foundations, and large portions of highways were washed out for hundreds of kilometers. One elderly man who went out his driveway to check a neighbour’s property was swept off his feet by rushing water and washed out to sea. People needing dialysis were taken aboard helicopters to distant hospitals. 
The official blessing of the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice located in the lovely Pippy Park area of St. John’s took place today. 
opened Centre. 
In the ensuing days the owner of the property told the committee who came to examine the house and land that a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that was in the grotto had originally come from the local parish school, which had been administered by Sisters of Mercy, Our Lady of Lourdes School. The owner said that he had just recently offered the statue to one of the Mercy Convents because of the pending sale of the property. A short while after that the sisters learned that the statue had been warmly and gratefully welcomed at McAuley Convent and would eventually be ensconced in the garden there. When the Mount Scio property was finally purchased plans were made that the statue would be sent back to be installed in the empty grotto. Our Lady of Lourdes has returned 
to her former abode. Through her intercession we pray that the Mercy Centre for Ecology and Justice will be blessed in its ministry in care for the earth and for all of creation and in its efforts to promote the cause for peace and justice locally and globally. (The Centre is ideally located in Pippy Park, a huge green space in the center of St. John’s.)
in an attempt to assist the people of Haiti. Through a fund-raising campaign of a few hours, $2,000 was collected. This amount has been forwarded to “Doctors Without Borders” to assist physicians and coworkers in their efforts to save lives and to control infection and disease.
From the Opening Prayer/Ritual, where we heard the call to acknowledge the presence of God within us, among us and in all creation, to the welcome, where we were challenged by the words of the poet, Mary Oliver ‘Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so…Be ignited, or be gone’, to the Litany of Blessing where we were reminded that we are blessed as custodians of the open table, symbol of creation’s abundant resources, from which no one is ever to be excluded, we heard the same call, to be agents of change, to engage in a more expansive way of living, a more integrated way of being.
Conlon spoke of the effects that a culture of greed, oppression and domination lead to – widespread unemployment, violence, substance abuse and ecological devastation. Yet the message was a call to hope. The brokenheartedness is not about despair but rather the call to break our hearts open so as to become people of compassion, leading to joy in the struggle and faith in the fulfillment. Drawing on the spirituality, the wisdom, the teaching of a number of our great thinkers, mystics, teachers, scientists, Conlon laid out for us a new way of being, a new way of living. The stars tell the great cosmic story; the streets tell our human-based hopes and dreams. He reminded us that we are genetically coded to live as community and that humans have the choice as to what the community will look like; it is all about Story and Dream. He challenged us to become geo-justice people, honoring each other’s gifts and respecting soul life.
