Andrew Matte and Ken Shular
Town Crier Online
May 9, 2003

Residents and politicians are fuming over the province’s plans to put temporary diesel-powered generators in Ontario neighbourhoods to help produce enough electricity to meet demand.

The corner of Finch Ave. E. and Leslie St. is among a half-dozen sites where a collection of tractor trailer-sized generators could be turned on during peak demand periods when Ontarians crank up air conditioners during the summer’s hottest days. Others include sites at the corner of Kipling Ave. and Dundas Ave. and in Etobicoke, Scarborough, London and Ottawa.

The province is hoping the generators, which the government has just issued tenders for, will generate 200 to 400 megawatts of power and be operated a maximum of four hours a day between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The province has said it’s confident on getting continual power from the Pickering nuclear plant, as well as others.

Pickering Unit A is expected to open in June for the first time since being mothballed in 1997. And other units at Pickering and at the Bruce station in Kincardine, the TransAlta plant near Sarnia and the Brascan plant on the Mississagi River near Wawa are also expected to come online.

"I can’t think of a sillier thing I’ve heard in my life," said Barry McMonagle, president of the Bayview Willowdale Homeowners Association.

McMonagle believes the need for the generators shows that the planned privatization of hydro hasn’t panned out well enough to provide Ontario with power.

"It would have been good that if five years ago they came up with a policy to ensure there were enough plants on line, " he said.

He said he hopes that if the generators are needed, a spot is found well away from any residences.

"The noise is going to be just terrible."

While the Ernie Eves government is taking heat over allegations it’s mismanaging the province’s hydro system, it’s arguing it’s simply thinking ahead by introducing the generators.

The government said the generators are merely a safeguard because it wants to avoid a similar problem that arose last year when hot weather put record demands on the system and prompted a warning of blackouts or brownouts.

". . . These generators will not be necessary, but we are doing the prudent thing and planning for every eventuality, as it is incumbent upon us to do, and act responsibly," Eves said.

Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty said the move to bring in generators is too little too late. He argued the province should be working harder at teaching homeowners and businesses how to be more energy conscious, while also doing more to provide environmentally-friendly sources of electricity.

"After failing to plan for our energy needs for the past eight years, the Harris-Eves government now wants to put noisy, dirty, expensive generators into the backyards of families," McGuinty said.

"It created a crisis in our energy sector. Now it’s making our neighborhoods pay the price for its mismanagement." Also at issue is whether the placement of the generators would require a full environmental assessment. Critics argue the generators, which will sit on flatbed trailers and be fueled by separate diesel tanks, are being sneaked into neighbourhoods without any input from residents, as would be the case in any similar more permanent power generation plants.

"It’s an internal process," charged NDP leader Howard Hampton.

"An environmental assessment process is a public thing where, effectively, other parties get to test what the government is doing and ask questions," Hampton said.

Tom Adams, executive director of the national environmental watchdog Energy Probe, said news of the province’s plan to bring in generators proves it’s dropped the ball when it comes to power planning.

"The government has so severely mismanaged the power system that we are now in the situation we are in, that we have little choice but to install these things and we have little choice as to where we put them," he said.

Adams said he will fear for anyone who lives near the generators when they are in use.

"There will be belching stacks, the black plumes – what they are going to do is set up a big parking lot full of these screaming diesel engines with a line-up at the gate of fuel tankers hauling in diesel," Adams said.

Adams added that even if the generators aren’t needed to meet increased demand during hot spells, he suspects they’ll be turned on in case one of the nuclear plants runs into any technical problems.

Don Valley West MPP David Turnbull said the critics are motivated only by politics in their charges. He said the Liberals and the NDP were jumping to conclusions and "scare-mongering" with their arguments.

"This is just a flight of fantasy," Turnbull said.

"The Liberals and the NDP are desperately trying to find something to attack us on."

Turnbull said the province is merely being extra safe because of the record demand for electricity across Ontario.

"We’ve got an RFP (request for proposals) out for people to provide extra generating capacity just in case there was any surge or any of the plants went down. Last year we had a difficult summer – we had sufficient supply, but we came very close on several occasions," he said.

"The idea of having extra generating power – small local generators – is just simply to make sure that we’ve got absolute security of supply in Ontario."

Turnbull insists even if any generators are turned on, they will be well away from residential neighbourhoods. And in the cases where they need to be close to homes, only cleaner natural gas generators will be used.

Turnbull argues that the generators are what’s needed to ensure residents, as well as businesses, get the power they need, especially because of the problems that have occurred at nuclear plants in years past.

"This is a way of being prudent managers," he said.

"There is no doubt about it, we were very seriously let down by the fact that both Bruce and Pickering weren’t up last year and we are just not going to allow the good people of this province and all of the businesses to be left in the lurch," he said.