I first participated in the public engagement process on March 31, 2006.
A week or so before, our family had heard of the transmission line grid expansion though our community from a neighbour who was, quite rightly as it turned out, very concerned by the prospect.
He had newly arrived to the
Grant Road and had been attracted by the beautiful and peaceful surroundings.
The advent of the transmission lines would compromise both. My mother called me and filled me in on this potential problem, and told me there would be an information meeting about the
East Point industrial wind energy installation at the end of March.
I was living temporarily in
New Brunswick, but I wrote to the Deputy Minister of the Department of Environment, Energy and Forestry, and asked for more information about this transmission line.
He forwarded my inquiry to the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation.
I received this as part of an email explaining route rationale, as well as an indication of the size and shape of the poles:
http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/dingwell_mills.pdf
(N.B.: The above document also shows that the original budget for the transmission line was 3.575 million (p. 4). This point will become important in a future post.)
This document shows three routes were considered to take the electricity generated by the turbines from East point to the Dingwells Mills Substation. One potential route runs along the north shore (Route 16). A second runs along the south shore (Route 2 and Route 16). A third route, the one chosen, cuts right through the middle of the province, through the centre of the county.
When the impact of the transmission line became clear, my brother Howlan and I put our concerns to paper, writing directly to the CEO of the PEI Energy Corporation. This was on and around April 1 (April Fool's day). We clearly communicated how coming through our community would do harm, devaluing property and harming the beauty of the place. We pointed out that the north shore route would encourage more wind energy installations in the future (it’s a windy part of the province), and the south shore already had a transmission line. Why were they introducing a new transmission line through our community? The document above makes passing reference to “technical and economic reasons” which ruled out the north and south routes (p.1). This was not enough of an explanation, in our view.
My mother Paulette and brother Conor attended the March 31 information meeting in person, stated our family concerns, and added some personal ones. My mother, a retired nurse and former occupational health and safety instructor, was and is a very health conscious person. She is very concerned about the possible carcinogenic effect of electromagnetic radiation; the high voltage line would ultimately generate 138Kv (which the document above indicates is twice as much as a residential service grid). She also wrote to Minister Jamie Ballem after the meeting and explained her position and her fears in very direct, even emotional, terms.
I should note that, at this planning stage, which highlighted “community engagement,” all of our correspondence was acknowledged. We received answers to most concerns. Our worries, which were aired in person at public meetings, were heard in a very polite and responsive manner. It seemed our concerns were being taken seriously. Everyone felt good.
I should note as well that there were aspects of the transmission route chosen that recommended it. If you look at the maps provided in the appendices of the above document (pp. 6-8), and if you know the area, the transmission line for the most part follows along dirt roads and avoids residential areas. Except ours, that is.
We are on page 7.
On the other hand, a cynic might point out that by cutting through the centre of the province, the transmission lines are as far away from the windy coastal areas as possible. If the utility were ever to be contracted to extend the transmission grid from another new wind energy installation (and the current provincial government plans to make PEI a leader in wind energy), this placement would ensure longer branches to the central transmission line; potentially more dollars from said contracts.
Perhaps I’m misreading the situation, however. Maritime Electric is a partner with the Province of Prince Edward Island in the wind energy installation at East Point, and says that the line transmission was their investment in the project. On the other hand, it seems that their relationship with Ventus, the owners of a private wind energy installation in the western end of the province, is not a partnership and the grid extension to service it was done by commission.
Have I mentioned that Maritime Electric holds a virtual monopoly on Prince Edward Island?
Detailed explanations of these arrangements and partnerships are not part of the public domain, although I will continue to search for them. Either way, Grant Road/Gowan Brae was the community caught in the middle—a seeming “oversight” in the planning process. Still it’s important to emphasize that there were ways around us. One neighbour, who was in attendance at the March 31 meeting, tabled the suggestion of running the line along at least part of the old railway bed, and avoid our homes that way. The decommissioned railroad on Prince Edward Island has been converted into a popular recreational biking, hiking and snowmobiling trail (called the ‘rails to trails’), but as far as I know, no one lives along the route in question. The transmission line could avoid our homes via this government right of way.
Government officials did not seem to like this idea, though, citing public use (more on this point, too, in a blog post to come). Nonetheless, they asked utility representatives on the project to try and find an alternate route to take care of us. Maritime Electric says that the matter was, at this point, left entirely with utility employees.
These individuals seemed to put a plan together quickly. By the end of the first week of April 2006 my mother emailed me to say that an alternate route had been found. Hooray!
It was then that I naïvely made my first mistake. Feeling good about the public process in this province, I didn’t even think to ask for details and considered the problem dealt with. I set into a busy spring and summer of fairly intensive travel. I’ve recently earned a doctorate and I’m on the hunt for a university tenure track job, part of which means I have to hit the conference circuit every year. I visited my mother over the summer occasionally, staying in Souris for a week or two in August, and life went on as usual. The fall saw more travel for me, especially in late September and October.
The first week of November my mother called me to tell me the bypass was a bust and the transmission line was coming down our road.
I’ll continue this story, without going into gossip and hearsay about what went wrong with easement negotiations, in my next post. The focus will instead revolve around the questionable ethics of putting the “responsibility” for solving this problem on a community that had no part in creating it. And it will discuss how government officials, who did play a major part in creating it, just walked away.
