Mothballed Fundy Gypsum building outside Windsor coming down

Workers appear to have started tearing down one of the long-dormant Fundy Gypsum buildings in Wentworth Creek, Hants County.

The property and nine others in the Hantsport and western Hants County are owned by United States Gypsum of Chicago, but haven’t been operated for more than a decade. Some of the properties have buildings still on them, while others are where the gypsum was mined. The operation was shut down in 2011 after months of inactivity because of the sluggish housing markets in the United States brought on by the recession.

In January 2012, USG said that while the operations in West Hants were closed, the properties were not for sale and while it was hoped that at some point it would be able to reopen them, there were no plans at the time to do that.

A request to the company for information on what was happening at the Wentworth Creek site, or if any building would be affected, had not been answered by late Wednesday afternoon.

West Hants mayor Abraham Zebian said he noticed an online post about the work at the building on Wentworth Road, but the municipality hasn’t heard anything about what USG has planned for the operations or the properties.

“We have no information on any of that at this point,” he said Wednesday. “I just noticed that (online) yesterday myself. We’re still trying to get some answers.”

Zebian was still trying to maintain some optimism, even though it has been 12 years since the operation was running.

“It could mean multiple things,” he said. “It could easily mean that they will at some point in the future revamp operations there and just for liability at this point, whatever is there is obsolete and could be being removed and paving the way for something new. We just don’t know at this point.”