Hi Kathy,
Thanks for sending this info. All along I've considered the 'pumped storage' proposal crazy and dangerous. Building a lake on top of the old Marmora Mine slagheap, using electricity to pump water UP HILL to this lake at off-peak Ontario Hydro hours, & then letting it flow back downhill to generate electricity at peak rates, is a Rube Goldberg fantasy at best. I've never believed anyone could take this whacked-out idea seriously.
The whole concept is based on Ontario Hydro's current rate charges for different times of daily use. All Hydro has to do is change its rate structure, and the whole silly project collapses (sinks).
The monetary aspect of this is nothing less than gaming Ontario Hydro's Byzantine rate structures. In effect, it's arbitrage, the same game bigtime financial traders use to skim money from international markets. This project creates nothing, except a dangerous 'lake' perched high above a small village. Cue the soundtrack to any number of disaster movies here!!! Or that old standby classic song, WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS ...
"Tell me it ain't so, Joe."
This proposal can't really be happening, can it?
Thanks, Kathy, for being such a concerned citizen and watchdog for our little community.
best wishes,
Chris (Faiers)
On 2012-06-18, at 2:09 PM, Kathy Hamilton wrote:
You can download our local council agenda for their Tues June 19 (2pm) regular afternoon council meeting, here:
admin.marmoraandlake.ca/94/files/ByLaw/2012%20June%2019%5B1%5D%2E12%20agenda%2Edoc
There are TWO delegations of much interest that I may "speak to" during the allowed 3 minutes per person, for their "public input" before the meeting adjournment. Hopefully, others present will partake of the same opportunity to have their say as local ratepayers who pay the bills accumulated by our municipality.
I urge you and anyone you know or might wish to bring along, to attend this meeting. Please consider forwarding at least this sentiment and agenda link to everyone you know. This will be the first and only (and could be the last?) opportunity - since the "public info meeting" of June 10, 2011 to reveal the big "project" surprise kept secret from us for several years - that any local people will have been provided, to personally address both Northland Power reps and their local council at the same time - publicly and with witnesses including the local media.
Beyond my own site, the primary public exposure related to Marmora's local "pumped storage" controversies have been provided by Toronto-area bloggers, whom I've credited and linked to in return.
If you call me or drop in at prearranged mutual convenience, I would be happy to share of the photos and recount the rewarding experiences a few of us posing objections to Northland's proposal here in Marmora enjoyed on Manitoulin Island on June 15 - with our participation in an event outlined in a June 14, 2012 posting by Toronto blogger and energy consultant Tom Adams, here:
http://www.tomadamsenergy.com/2012/06/14/renewable-energy-vs-responsible-aboriginal-government-part-three-mchigeeng-vs-wikwemikong-blowing-in-opposite-directions/
This provided a few of us representing the unorganized and majority publicly-invisible opposition here in Marmora with a very enjoyable "first" opportunity to personally meet and publicly present an on-principle as well as project-specific combination of inseparable "greed energy" concerns related to Northland Power projects and interests shared by others who are battling local "greed energy" projects elsewhere, that actually DO qualify as "renewable" by provincial definition - unlike the non-renewable pumped storage "greed energy" proposal from Northland Power here in Marmora.
I anticipate experiencing more of this off and online interactivity between geographically near and distant members of this fast-growing, new and self-integrated Ontario community without borders, of their indivisible opposition-on-principle members, that Northland Power and its own or partner projects representing "greed energy" have graciously inspired, helped introduce and cemented together in principled solidarity, in the near future.
You can share of June 1, 2012 background info about this MERE protest development on Manitoulin Island, here - you may also find this project "local approval" painfully familiar?:
http://www.tomadamsenergy.com/2012/06/01/renewable-energy-vs-responsible-aboriginal-government-part-one-manitoulin-pro-democracy-activist-julian-nowgabow/
This posting was followed by additional June 4, 2012 related background info, here:
http://www.tomadamsenergy.com/2012/06/04/renewable-energy-vs-responsible-aboriginal-government-part-two-evidence-oeb-declined-re-improper-governance-of-manitoulin-wind-project/
You might also want to watch for after-the-fact media sharings of related MERE protest photos and interviews. Reporters from CTV, CBC, the Manitoulin Expositor, the Sudbury Star and unidentified others were monitoring both David Suzuki's presence at the "opening ceremony" and its inspired local "opposition" peaceful public protest.
I will be updating my site asap, to publicly share our photos and comments resulting from our participation in that MERE protest near Little Current, of June 15. Few here realize the depth of knowledge that First Nations Elders, Grandmothers and band members from Manitoulin Island (and everywhere else!) have of Marmora, the Marmoraton Mine site and Northland's "interests" that have led to Marmora's similar community divisions, political intrigue and related Greed Energy AND glocalized Greed Economy-based "developments".
You may also be interested in personally learning of recent developments on another "glocal" battle front that a few of us here began local engagement in last fall, involving another project approved by local council - this time at their "planning" meeting August 2, 2011, that we felt threatened our private property rights and represented local council's required approval for the provincial "balancing" of our previously exclusive interests in our private residential property.
Front-door and comprehensive private property expropriation looks great in comparison, once you understand the "special process" and all implications of its private property interests "balancing" act - from having personally battled against its imposition upon yourself and your own private residential property for months, in predetermined futility.
I spoke about this "special process" and its local implications to all private property ownership "interests" as a delegate to the regular local council meeting of May 15, as was lightly referenced in the local EMC edition published on May 24, online here:
http://www.emcnortheast.ca/20120524/news/Resident+speaks+out
Of the 3 local ratepayers who had formally objected to this largely unknown local council approval throughout related County "public meetings" last fall and formally requested the exclusion of our residential private properties - which was denied without explanation by our local council, Hastings County and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing - I followed up by filing a pertinent Notice of Appeal for an Ontario Municipal Board appeal before I departed for Manitoulin Island on Thursday June 14.
If my appeal is allowed and entertained on the pseudo-eligible "grounds" I've provided to the OMB through the MMAH, all proceedings should be local and open to the public. On this becoming a reality, I hope you would attend and I would welcome advice from any who may have had past experience with the OMB appeal process or input from any others who have researched the impacts within and without similarly-imposed Urban Growth Boundaries established for enforcing local "Smart Growth" policies - particularly from any other residential private property owners here in M & L.
Most research to date is specific to larger and more densely populated "human settlement" urban cores within the comprehensive municipal geographical boundaries, but public policy analysis experts in this area that I've already spoken with suggest the widely-recognized paradoxes and impacts of such "Urban Growth Boundary" imposition - to be soon realized by the greater than average number of homeowners with lower than average incomes here (and the impacts on their private residential properties) - will likely be "felt" proportionally here in more rural Marmora and Lake.
It would appear that Ontario's policies imposing punitive land-use restrictions for protecting "Greenbelts" from "urban sprawl" are being shifted in their focus from the provincially well-publicized Greater Golden Horseshoe and Northern Plans to the lesser-known plans for all lesser-urbanized areas of Ontario. If you have not yet studied all background "Glocal" concepts and planning pertinent to our area of Eastern Ontario and dating back to 2002, I suggest you should.
Sincerely, Kathy Hamilton - 76 Cameron St, Marmora - home phone 613-472-5285
http://www.hamiltonsgarage.com/marmora_green/
See "delegations" to the June 19 meeting, as copied from the referenced meeting agenda, below. FYI, re CVCA means about our local Crowe Valley Conservation Authority
===============================
AGENDA
FOR THE COUNCIL OF
THE MUNICIPALITY OF MARMORA AND LAKE
MEETING HELD TUESDAY, JUNE 19TH, 2012 AT 2:00 P.M.
MARMORA TOWN HALL
1. DISCLOSURE OF PECUNIARY INTEREST
2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA
3. REEVES REPORT
4. PUBLIC MEETING – Road Closure and Sale of Land – Page 1 - 2
To close and declare as surplus, Parts 24And 34 of Plan 21R-6145, being a road widening on Deloro Road acquired by the County of Hastings in 1986 and subsequently transferred to the Municipality of Marmora and Lake.
5. DELEGATIONS
2:10 p.m. Mr. John Wright, Northland Power
Re: Update of Pumped Storage Project
2:40 p.m. Crowe Lake Waterway Association
Re: CVCA
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