Editor,
It was informative to read in the Independent (Feb. 4) that Deputy Mayor Shirley Keaveney and Councillors Harley Greenfield and Tom Bell had such a good time on their TC-Energy-sponsored trip to Ludington, Michigan, to assess the effects of its 53-year-old pumped storage project on the local landscape.
Unfortunately, in the report from Meaford’s CAO Sean Everett, who also tagged along for the ride, many of the key points about the Ludington PSP—and its marked differences from the $7-billion megaproject that TC Energy is proposing for the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre in Meaford—were glossed over or omitted entirely. Too bad that, as Everett told the Jan. 29th meeting of the Pumped Storage Advisory Committee, TC Energy refused to allow all members of the Pumped Storage Advisory Committee (Keaveney and Greenfield are members) to go on that trip. We might have gotten a clearer picture of all the ways that Ludington’s pluses and minuses don’t apply here.
First, there was the revelation that the Ludington pumped storage project has become a tourist attraction, offering visitors a vista over Lake Michigan from viewing platforms and, as Deputy Mayor Keaveney noted, producing a source of municipal revenue. But as she also admitted during the meeting, TC Energy’s project, slated for Department of National Department lands, will be off-limits to visitors, just as the base already is now, even to the local rod and gun club that used to operate there. Thus, no tourist income bonanza can be expected in Meaford.
If anything, the project’s damaging impact on the waters of Georgian Bay—creating possible turbidity, currents and mayhem for marine life—could reduce the number of tourists, swimmers and boaters that local businesses already count on every summer here.
The CAO’s report boasts that Ludington has turned into a top salmon fishing destination. It also mentions how a Fish Trust has been set up to foster the growth of local fish populations—as if that just happened on a whim. What the report fails to mention is that, when the Ludington plant opened in 1972, it was found to be killing 150 million fish a year. It took a 12-year lawsuit by environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation before the private owners of Ludington’s PSP finally agreed to erect mile-long nets across its intact pipes to prevent—or at least lessen—that massive annual fish kill. That lawsuit was also what mandated the creation of the Fish Trust to compensate commercial and sport fishing interests for their losses over the years.
The deputy mayor reported that no Ludington townsfolk she talked to seemed concerned about the plant or its threat to their properties or public safety. But she also failed to note that the town of Ludington (population about 7,500) lies north of the plant and there appear to be no homes or farms situated directly below its 830-acre reservoir, as there would be here. In Meaford, an estimated 1,000 residents—taxpayers all!—occupy the 300 homes or farms that already exist downhill from the proposed site for TC Energy’s 375-acre man-made reservoir. Since two-thirds of that reservoir would be above ground, surrounded by 20-metre-high concrete walls holding back 23 billion litres of water above their properties, many fear that a leak or outright failure in that dam system could cost them not only their real estate and life savings but their very lives. Those fears are not unfounded. Insurance companies won’t provide coverage for potential flood damage should the dam fail.
The report paints such a glowing portrait of the Ludington facility – which TC Energy once boasted is the model for its proposal in Meaford — that PSAC member Ginny Ellis told the meeting that “in my opinion the report read like a TC (Energy) brochure.”
Clair Balfour, Meaford
