Editor,
Prediction: The next step our Deputy Mayor (DM) is going to take is a motion to remove the demand for Impact Assessment or Independent Studies from Meaford’s Willing Host resolution. Her action will free up TCE to do pretty much whatever it wants environmentally on the 4CDTC and in the Bay, from Meaford Council’s perspective.
I like Meaford’s Deputy Mayor. We meet occasionally, but maybe not any more after this letter to the Independent. The DM had claimed for years the Impact Assessments would protect the environment and Meaford residents from effects including toxic contamination of air and water, fish kill, water quality impacts and dam failure. The DM communicated strongly that government agencies would not let a project proceed that would harm the environment, disrupt the military mission or be a threat to residents. Her message seems to be “Trust me and TCE.”
However, TCE’s Initial Project Description (IPD) filing with the IAAC is incomplete. It notes several studies, but it does not release them. The IPD does not adequately address entrainment, the fish kill that will happen in this open loop design, although it does mention young sturgeon located near the proposed twenty intakes. These young sturgeon, like other small fish, would be vulnerable to being pulled into the intakes and be drawn into the turbines. The IPD does not address Dam Safety with specifics. The project design is not disclosed and TCE reverts to the possibility of above ground, high-tension lines running across the Escarpment to Essa, but did not disclose the power line track! They did not show how the base facilities were going to be relocated and restructured. After ten years of planning and lobbying, I believe they know exactly what they want to do, yet disclosed the minimum to get by this step of the process. It is about shareholder return and money.
Careful study of the project concludes there are insurmountable problems which cannot be solved in this project. I appreciate the confidence of engineers in their design talents, but, during construction, keeping toxic molecules from being projected into the air or eroding soil into the water shed is impossible. Preventing fish kill in an open loop design is impossible. A bat study Save Georgian Bay sponsored years ago concluded a Species at Risk bat habitat will be destroyed if the reservoir is constructed. And there are a dozen other Species at Risk on the reservoir site according to DND documents. Those habitats would be destroyed.
Last month the Deputy Mayor made a motion to eliminate the Pumped Storage Advisory Committee just days before IAAC solicited comments. This committee had official standing as the voice of resident’s concerns. Now it is gone. I believe the Deputy Mayor will now move to eliminate the requirement of environmental, habitat and residential impact studies from the Willing Host resolution. It is a move to help TCE and Provincial leadership sidestep environmental protections, and it means residents are less protected. It is a bad move, Shirley. I hope I am wrong.
Tom Buck, Save Georgian Bay
