Dear Editor,
Once upon a time, when TC Energy proposed its pumped storage proposal to the Defence Department, its cost was pegged at $2.2 billion. When it was presented to Meaford residents in December 2019, it was $3.3 billion. By 2022 it had effectively doubled to $4.3 billion. Now, in a “community readiness study” prepared for Meaford Council by global consulting company Deloitte, the estimate is $8.5 billion. That means the cost of this contentious ‘green’ mega-project has quadrupled in fewer than eight years. Engineers with experience in other hydro projects have warned it would actually cost even more: at least $10 billion. With construction not expected to start before 2028, even that number may be too low.
Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, which conducts cost-benefit studies, has twice declared the project of no net economic benefit either to the province’s electricity system or to its customers, most recently in 2023. If the project made no economic sense then, it is hard to understand how it makes any sense now — at $8.5 billion.
But the Ford government seems as unconcerned about these soaring numbers as it did with the optics of buying a private jet for the high-flying premier. Nor does it seem phased by the even greater environmental costs of this project: blowing an enormous reservoir-sized crater in the Niagara Escarpment and releasing toxic contaminants into Georgian Bay, endangering its drinking water and recreation industries — the lifeblood of the area.
How do you calculate the cost of that devastation?
Clair Balfour, Meaford
