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Viewed from the air, the 10-hectare barren sheet of land on the outskirts of Halifax, bulging with mounds of rock and dirt, and dotted with a few forlorn trees and a heap of old pallets and wood, stands out among the homes and housing development down the road.
It is an oddity on the landscape. It’s also at the centre of an unusual legal case.
Provincial officials are using legislation typically aimed at drug traffickers and organized crime to seek the forfeiture of what they say is equipment used in an illegal landfill operated last year at the site in Upper Hammonds Plains, N.S.
It’s a rare case where Nova Scotia’s Civil Forfeiture Act, which is nearly two decades old, has been deployed following an investigation of violations of environmental law. It’s proving contentious.
The owner of one piece of equipment is fuming with frustration, arguing his excavation company had nothing to do with an alleged dump, was simply leasing some land at the property, and has been unfairly swallowed up in the investigation.
Arni Lively, the owner of Dennis Lively Construction, doesn’t mince words — he asserts the province’s Environment Department effectively “stole” his $300,000 topsoil sifting machine, the Powerscreen Warrior 800, when they seized it earlier this year.
“People are out of work because of this,” said Lively, noting it normally takes six employees to produce clean soil with the equipment. “I believe it was really heavy-handed and ill thought out.”
The Powerscreen and a backhoe and excavator not owned by Lively were hauled away in January, months after an investigation of the site off Pockwock Road.
In records filed last month in Nova Scotia Supreme Court as part of a forfeiture application, the Justice Department said a drone flown by Environment Department investigators in June 2025 showed trucks bringing construction debris and litter to the property.
The documents allege the footage captured Franklyn Whiley, whose family owns the land, taking cash, then burying the waste using an excavator. The records say “dirt and debris” were being loaded into the Powerscreen “adjacent” to where the waste was being dumped.
None of the allegations have been tested in court. No date for the forfeiture hearing has been set. An affidavit filed last month by the Justice Department’s director of civil forfeiture said investigators are considering charges under the Environment Act and waste regulations, but none have yet been laid.
The Environment Department has declined to release its drone footage to CBC or comment on the case.
Whiley, who is listed as the owner of the excavator and backhoe that are facing forfeiture, said in a phone call he was willing to do an interview but on his lawyer’s advice will wait until later in the court process.
Whiley did give permission to CBC to go on the property. A padlocked gate bars vehicles from entering. There was some garbage near the entrance, including the remnants of what appeared to be an industrial kitchen, some old office chairs and a number of oil tanks.
Further in, the site appeared to be covered almost entirely in soil and rock, some of it piled, some hard-packed. There were a handful of spots with trash or pieces of litter. Along one edge, there was a string of more than two dozen vehicles.
The Civil Forfeiture Act, according to the Justice Department’s website, typically targets money and vehicles linked to drug trafficking, prohibited guns, goods such as jewelry bought with the proceeds of crime, and buildings used to sell illegal cannabis.
It makes the forfeiture case involving the alleged landfill a “little unusual,” according to Jeff Simser, a Toronto lawyer now in private practice who was the first director of civil forfeiture in the country, in Ontario.
But while provincial civil forfeiture legislation is often aimed at the proceeds from street-level drug trafficking, he said the laws were designed from the get-go to capture other kinds of non-criminal infractions, including operating an illegal landfill.
“We absolutely contemplated this possibility,” he said in an interview. “You might either want to take the money that they’re making, or if they’ve got something that’s enabling the crime, an instrument, you might want to take it out of circulation so it’s not being used.”
Lively, the owner of the Powerscreen, said he didn’t know about the alleged landfill on the land off Pockwock Road. He said he was simply leasing space to store soil removed during excavation work for a housing development a few minutes down the road.
The soil sat there for about two years, and was turned every six months to dry and rot, Lively said. Last year, his crew began using the Powerscreen to sort the material, turning it into topsoil that could then be sold or used in other projects.
Manufacturing clean topsoil is an important part of his business, Lively said. Sales of topsoil provide startup money at the beginning of the season, he said, and without the Powerscreen he’s lost “six figures” in operating cash.
He said he believes investigators and lawyers in the case aren’t familiar with his equipment or why it’s used. He said he’s unhappy he is the apparent “test subject” where Nova Scotia civil forfeiture laws are being applied to an environmental case.
“This is used for drugs and guns and tobacco, it’s not used for Powerscreeners,” Lively said of the forfeiture laws. “There’s a lot on the line here.”
In court documents, a Justice Department lawyer said the equipment seized from Pockwock Road was used in activities contrary to the Environment Act and Solid Waste-Resource Management Regulations, making them an “instrument of unlawful activity” under the Civil Forfeiture Act.
The Justice Department declined an interview request, citing the court case. A spokesperson said there have been no other cases referred by the Environment Department to the director of civil forfeiture in three years, and it’s unclear whether there were any before that.
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