Black River
About
About Black River
The Black River Group of Companies includes:
Community Volunteer & Environmental Activism
Neal Livingston has produced award-winning documentary films for television broadcast, theatrical release, and community use, on a wide variety of topics, from the political to the humorous. Livingston has made 40 films, has a Fine Arts Degree in film, and has been producing films since the late 1970s. Several of these films made are recognized as the most important political documentaries made on environmental issues in the region.
Neal is also a visual artist and photographer. His photoworks since 2002 have been shown in 5 one person and 5 group shows in Nova Scotia. Also see his pieces called Tree Art, made from trees he selected from his eco-certified woodlot. In 2021, Livingston founded Forest Table to produce tables from his woodlot.
Since the 1980s, Livingston also has had an independent career in Nova Scotia in energy production, from domestic to commercial grid scale in hydroelectric, wind, and solar.
As a volunteer he has been worked to promote clean energy solutions for Nova Scotia. Between 2010 and 2020, he was a founding member of a volunteer community group Clean Power Now, that worked to get Nova Scotia off fossil fuels by importing electricity from Hydro Quebec.
Livingston has a distinguished career as an environmental activist on issues related to energy, forestry practices – against clearcutting and forest spraying, and wilderness preservation on Cape Breton Island. Neal is the co-chair of the Margaree Environmental Association (MEA). He is the former chair of the National Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club of Canada. From his home province, he has received a Nova Scotia Energy Award (1989) and the first ever awarded Creative Arts / Cultural Nova Scotia Environmental Award (1993).
In 2008, Neal was awarded by the Nova Scotia Government, Woodlot Owner of the Year – Eastern Region. Since 1984, he also owns and operates Black River Maple Products, a commercial maple syrup farm and woodlot operation.
He owns Black River Hydro Limited, which has a 220-kilowatt hydroelectric plant and was Nova Scotia’s first new private company selling electricity to the grid since 1984. Since 1980, he has had a micro-hydro plant that runs his passive solar home and was one of the first people to net meter domestically with NS Power since 1993. Starting in 2003, Neal began work to develop commercial-sized wind power projects in Nova Scotia. In 2005 he formed Black River Wind Limited, he is the President, and Peggy Cameron is the Vice President. In 2013, they partnered with Glen Estill and built a three turbine 5.9 MW wind project, selling power to NS Power on a long-term contract.