Dear Editor:
Mr. Bruce Mason’s letter of April 22 expressed the belief that TCE has the engineering talent to safely build and operate the dam, the reservoir, the pumping station and the extensive water lines into Georgian Bay for the intake and outflow of Georgian Bay water. He compares those engineers to NASA engineers flying the drone on Mars.
Mr. Mason, I agree with your excitement at the accomplishment on Mars by the bright minds at NASA.
However, comparing NASA to TCE is an apples to onions comparison. No one is at risk of losing their life if the NASA Mars drone failed to fly. Quite the opposite, if the TCE dam fails, or if the water they are constructing in becomes polluted. The water at risk is not on Mars, it is the supply for Meaford. TCE’s performance record is poor. As shared in the extensive report on TransCanada Energy (TCE) from The Polaris Institute: “According to the National Energy Board, 17 of the 39 major pipeline accidents in Canada (from 1992 to 2014) were on pipelines owned by TransCanada or its subsidiary NGTL.”
TCE has been engineering these oil pipeline projects for decades and they still have serious breaks and leaks. The Meaford project will be TCE’s first PSP. With this poor record, will Meaford residents feel and be safe living below 23 million cubic meters of water behind a dam designed, built and operated in TCE’s first effort for such a facility?
Mr. Mason, please identify the projects you refer to when you say: “It’s being done safely every single day all over the world.” In Meaford, 23 million cubic meters of water would be directly over the heads of 1,000 souls. I have asked and neither the DND or TCE has identified a project being built over the heads of so many residents in North America today. It is not difficult to find how unsafe dams are; over the past couple years dams have failed or caused evacuations in Quebec, Hawaii, Michigan, China, and Florida. The project construction and operating engineers for those dams were likely as talented as TCE’s.
Tom Buck, Save Georgian Bay
