Dear Editor,
An April 25 letter questions why several Georgian Bay area municipal councils have claimed that TC Energy’s proposal for pumped storage would be a “bad financial deal” for Ontario and that “no one in the entire world knows the financial details yet.”
In fact, it is well known that Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator has twice evaluated the proposal and found it of no net economic value to the province’s electricity customers. Despite being aware of this, councils in Meaford, Owen Sound, and Grey County apparently all consider that they know better.
Refreshingly, a few individual councillors have paid attention and declared their opposition to a proposal whose costs outweigh its benefits. That is without even counting the pre-construction costs that the Ontario government has inexplicably agreed to pick up and that will be transferred to us all as taxpayers. The overall costs that are, in fact, incalculable involve the massive and totally wasteful assault on Meaford’s landscape and the harm to the freshwater resource of Georgian Bay, which are among the significant attributes of Meaford and reasons to live here.
Why not protect them instead of letting a profit-motivated enterprise treat Meaford as an inconsequential frontier town while it tears up a UNESCO-designated escarpment to store power not needed here for big city markets in the south?
Clair Balfour, Meaford
