Energy Probe

Nuclear meltdown

Posted on August 16, 2002 by energyprbe

Tom Adams
National Post
August 16, 2002

The meltdown in the stock price of British Energy – down 92% from its peak – demonstrates that nuclear power is not remotely economic.

Here is a corporation – the world’s only listed nuclear generating company operating in a competitive arena – that seemingly has everything going for it, most recently a windfall in Ontario, where it leases eight Candu reactors.

And still this company’s stock performs more like a vanishing dot-com than the asset-rich, low-debt company that it is.

When Margaret Thatcher privatized the U.K.’s electric power sector in 1990, she created close to 20 power companies where one had stood. British Energy, formed in 1996 by investors who cherry-picked the best of the government’s nuclear assets, is the one economic catastrophe among them.

In the privatization, British Energy acquired 15 reactors, including the spanking new Sizewell B, the country’s most advanced reactor. For this impressive fleet – the 9,600 megawatts of nuclear capacity it acquired then exceeds the entire nuclear fleet operating in Ontario today – the company paid just half the cost of constructing Sizewell B alone. Not a bad start in life.

British Energy also benefitted from massive insurance subsidies in the form of legislation that absolves it of financial responsibility. In the U.K. and Canada, the company and its suppliers enjoy almost complete legal exemption from third-party liability in the event of a serious reactor accident. In the United States, where British Energy has a stake in three states, its third-party liabilities are also capped by law, albeit at a higher level than in Canada and the U.K.

British Energy – known for its solid management, strong work force, and good industrial worker safety record – performed superbly, astounding the energy world with the improvements that it squeezed out of its fleet. The company has consistently increased production from its nuclear units – a total of over 10% from 1996 to the present. Meanwhile, it lowered its costs from those same 15 reactors by a full 30%.

But the 30% wasn’t enough to overcome nuclear power’s inability to compete in a free-market environment. Nuclear power’s operating costs remained high relative to its competitors, particularly high-efficiency gas generation, which has driven down the cost of power to levels that eroded profits from British Energy’s nuclear plants.

Neither can it count on Ontario to remain a money machine. When British Energy first acquired its stake in the Ontario reactors, in July, 2000, it only expected to reap high revenues for a few months, until Ontario’s power sector was scheduled to become competitive. But Ontario’s then premier Mike Harris delayed the market opening until May of 2002, allowing British Energy to charge monopoly prices for another year.

The upshot of all these events has been a five-year profit slide. For the year ending in March, 2002, the company declared a loss of £527-million (about $1.2-billion). Early euphoria over the company’s prospects had led to a run-up in the stock price, from 105 pence per share at its launch to 749 pence per share in early 1999. Then reality set in, and the stock began to tumble. Starting this May, fresh operational problems at three reactors in the U.K. and one in Ontario further weakened investor confidence. The stock ended the day yesterday at 60 p/share. In the last year, British Energy’s stock declined by 78%, compared to 23% for the broader Financial Times index.

British Energy’s nuclear assets, when they were owned by the U.K. government, were valued at over £10-billion ($24-billion). British Energy’s current market capitalization is a mere £366-million ($880-million), and that includes stakes in 11 North American nuclear reactors.

British Energy’s response to its declining fortunes has been to ask for government aid. Last November, the company told the U.K. government that “New nuclear is uneconomic against gas-fired combined cycle plants in the present and foreseeable U.K. market.” The outlook for British Energy, and the U.K. nuclear industry, was glum, it explained. Most of its U.K. generators have graphite reactor cores that deteriorate with use, putting a finite limit on reactor life. Worried about the implications of being nothing more than a custodian for a dwindling rump of unwanted assets but also mindful that without protection from market forces new nuclear investment is impossible, the company began lobbying for fresh government subsidies to fuel another round of nuclear expansion.

For example, British Energy wants the government to force U.K. electricity customers to take 25% of their power from nuclear sources, and it wants taxpayers to take on various costs, including liabilities for radioactive waste. It also wants relief from business and production taxes. And it claims environmental benefits – such as an absence of greenhouse gases – as a rationale for government aid.

At the end of the day, the U.K.’s privately owned nuclear company is behaving much as its publicly owned predecessor did – asking for bailouts while producing high-cost power. When it was a government-run enterprise, politicians repeatedly complied, largely because the state-run utility managed to convince the politicians that nuclear power was economical. Now the chance of a government rescue, and the bankrolling of a new generation of reactors, is remote. The marketplace has pronounced on the economic viability of nuclear power.

Incentives are all in the timing

Posted on August 16, 2002 by energyprbe

Kristin Goff
Ottawa Citizen
August 16, 2002

Traditional meters such as this one [pictured] can measure only overall consumption; smart ‘interval’ meters reward consumers who reduce consumption during expensive peak hours.

With electricity use hitting record highs and prices climbing right along with them, Ontario consumers are being urged to conserve electricity and delay using dishwashers, washing machines and other appliances until late evening, past the peak-use hours.

Such public-spirited steps are good for the system, which on Tuesday saw prices skyrocket past 90 cents a kilowatt during one such peak demand period before falling 10-fold two hours later.

But some energy conservation advocates and industry officials predict Ontario’s newly deregulated electricity market will soon turn to more concrete ways to persuade consumers to shift their power consumption habits.

Through smart-metering technology, power distribution companies will be able to bill customers not only according to how much electricity they use but will be able to charge lower rates in off-peak times when the power costs less.

Unlike current meters, which only measure overall consumption, the new “interval” meters can record consumption by the hour and transmit that to the hydro distributor to match to wholesale prices that prevailed at the time. The idea is already being tested in Milton, west of Toronto, where a few residential customers have joined larger commercial users in adopting smart technology meters and a billing system that ties prices to fluctuating market costs. Nova Scotia Power and Edmonton’s EPCOR have also installed some interval meters to track time-of-day usage and are researching the idea, said Daniel Pouliot, vice-president of Nertec Design Inc., a Granby, Que., company that supplies the meters. It announced a marketing deal with Ozz Corp. of Concord, Ont., this week to step up marketing in Ontario.

If the idea takes hold, it could mean savings for those who do their laundry at 10 p.m. and curtail air-conditioning until bedtime and higher prices for those whose patterns don’t adjust during heat-waves and other high-demand periods.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a clean-energy conservation group, thinks time-of-day hydro billing is the next logical step in the evolution of the industry which was recently deregulated.

Since May prices have been set by market forces and they are set every five minutes by the province’s independent electricity market operator, which matches buy and sell orders. During the current heat wave, prices have swung from pennies to almost a dollar, during one brief period.

Some consumers have signed fixed price contracts, which guarantee level prices for the period of the contract, gambling that they’ll come out ahead if market prices average more than their contracted price.

But for most consumers, the prices for wholesale electricity are passed along by distribution companies, such as Hydro Ottawa, which also charge distribution and other costs.

Owen Mahaffy, Hydro Ottawa’s marketing director, says he doubts the savings from billing customers different rates according to when they use electricity would be worth the higher cost for such devices, which may run well over $100 for a meter, or triple the cost of conventional ones.

While shifting use to off-peak hours has been practiced by major industrial users for a long time, for consumers simply reducing overall consumption through energy efficient appliances, better insulation and small changes in habits would probably pay off better in the long run, Mr. Mahaffy says.

Still, there’s little doubt that consumers who buy power through their local distributor will feel the results of the latest heat wave in their pocketbook shortly, as wholesale prices are passed along.

Hydro Ottawa won’t be able to estimate the impact of this week’s heat wave for some time. But July’s scorching Canada Day and a second hot spell at the end of the month made a dramatic difference in what a typical household, using 750 kilowatts of power per month, would have paid.

In May, the hydro part of the bill would have been $22.87 when the average was 3.05 cents per kilowatt hour. The total bill, including distribution and other charges would have been $57.40, before taxes.

But hotter weather in July, would have increased monthly wholesale electricity costs to $43.20 and the total bill to $73.73 for the same amount of electricity use. (The comparison period provided by Hydro Ottawa was June 28 through July 28).

Because Hydro Ottawa billings are for two-month periods, hot spells may be tempered by cool spells. In any case, Mr. Mahaffy says he’s confident the average for the year will be in line with a 3.8 cents-per-hour forecast provided by the independent electricity market operator, which supplies wholesale electricity to companies like Hydro Ottawa.

Posted in Electricity | Leave a comment

Pak to set up two more nuclear power plants

Posted on July 12, 2002 by energyprbe

The Times of India
July 12, 2002

KARACHI — In an effort to augment its nuclear power capacity, Pakistan is set to add two more units to its existing nuclear power plants.

Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) is working on a plan to set up one unit each at its nuclear power plants at Karachi and Mianwali in Punjab, commission’s chairman Pervez Butt said on Thursday.

“In order to keep up with the global trend of using nuclear power and to increase the country’s power generating capacity, the PAEC is working on a plan to establish a second unit at site of Chashma Nuclear Power Plan (CHASNUPP) in Mianwali and another at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plan, (KANUPP) site, which would be called K2,” he said at the 7th convocation of the KANUPP Institute of Nuclear Power Engineering (KINPOE).

Compared to the 16 per cent share of nuclear power in the global power generation, he said Pakistan’s nuclear plants accounted for three per cent of the power production in the country.

He said KANUPP was nearing the end of its design life, but there were plans to extend its by 12 to 15 years.

He said the PAEC wanted to build a plant bigger than the combined capacity of KANUPP and CHASNUPP soon.

Posted in Nuclear Economics | Tagged nuclear costs | Leave a comment

Reactor safety inspection to be privatized

Posted on July 11, 2002 by Other News Sources

Paul Waldie
Globe and Mail
July 11, 2002

Ontario Power Generation is negotiating a deal to privatize safety analysis at its nuclear reactors.

“We are in negotiations with a company called NNC related to potential business opportunities,” Ontario Power spokesman John Earl said yesterday. “It basically is in regard to a group in OPG that does safety analysis work.”

NNC Ltd. is Britain’s leading nuclear consultant and it is affiliated with British Energy.

The move to contract out safety analysis has raised concerns among some nuclear consultants.

“I think it’s extremely worrisome if OPG is losing its direct control over nuclear safety,” said David Martin, a nuclear safety consultant with the Sierra Club of Canada. “When you start to divorce financial decision making from safety-related decision making, that could lead to problems.”

OPG is one of the largest nuclear plant operators in North America. It manages 12 reactors, including four at the Pickering A plant that were shut down in 1997 because of safety concerns. Reopening that plant has been delayed until 2003 and will cost as much as $2-billion, about 54 per cent more than planned.

OPG has about 300 engineers who perform safety analysis. They carry out tests and computer simulations to see how reactors would respond to accidents. Sources say the group has been reorganized internally under the name Newco in preparation to be sold.

OPG also operates 69 hydroelectric plants and six fossil-fuel plants. In total, it produces 85 per cent of Ontario’s electricity.

OPG also owns eight reactors at the Bruce station but it has leased operation of them to British Energy. NNC is working with British Energy to restart four of the Bruce reactors that were also shut down because of safety concerns.

An official at NNC declined to comment on the OPG negotiations.

Mr. Earl would not say when a deal will be reached or how much it would cost.

“Before OPG could conclude any agreement with NNC, the [Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] would have to be satisfied that OPG would continue to meet its safety requirements,” Mr. Earl said.

A deal with NNC would be the latest in a series of restructuring moves by OPG. The company has contracted out its computer operations and has announced plans to cut 2,000 jobs, or 17 per cent of its work force, over the next two years.

Mr. Martin said Britain’s nuclear regulator has raised concerns about contracting out by British Energy.

“The ongoing concern of the regulator in Britain has been that areas of important managerial control are being contracted out and they have deemed that to be unacceptable,” he said. British Energy “has been pushing the envelope. Obviously, OPG is copying that managerial style.”

Michel Cleroux, a spokesman for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, said the commission is aware of OPG’s plans.

“Having [safety analysis] done by someone to whom you contract the analysis is something that’s done quite frequently in other countries,” he said. “The analysis [reports] are what are used to determine safe operating limits within which safe operations are carried out. Operating within the limits continues to be [OPG’s] responsibility.”

Tom Adams, who heads Energy Probe, said the move is dramatic and will raise some concerns.

“There is nothing wrong in principle with having some of the safety analysis done outside,” Mr. Adams said. “The key issues are contractual in nature and ensuring that OPG can retain access to the necessary expertise.”

Posted in Nuclear Safety | Leave a comment

Meters obsolete

Posted on July 10, 2002 by energyprbe

Glen N. Tolhurst
Toronto Star
July 10, 2002

Click here to read Tom Adams’ letter, “Clear away barriers for smart electricity meters.”

Letter to the Editor
Re: Clear away barriers for smart electricity meters, July 8.

In his letter, Tom Adams of Energy Probe brought to light the lack of effort by electrical utilities (other than Milton Hydro) to truly serve their customers in the 21st century.

The use of obsolete electro-mechanical meters with the rotating disk and dials allows the utilities to bill customers based on an average price of electricity. Surely, in this age of microprocessor technology, there is the ability, if not the drive, to design and build a low-cost, solid-state consumption meter to permit the customer to plan off-peak power usage and to be billed for actual, time-of-day-based usage.

There must be a Canadian company that could step up to the plate to profitably build and market such a device.

Glen N. Tolhurst

Guelph

Posted in Electricity | Leave a comment

Clear away barriers for smart electricity meters

Posted on July 8, 2002 by energyprbe

Tom Adams
Toronto Star
July 8, 2002

Re: No incentive to conserve energy, Editorial, July 4.

Kudos to the Star for speaking up in favour of more intelligent electricity meters. Smart meters capable of keeping up with continuously changing spot prices are the front line of customer protection in Ontario’s new electricity market.

Some utilities are making great strides upgrading to smart meters. One leader is Milton Hydro, where all customers using more than 100 kilowatts have been upgraded.

Before ordering utilities to upgrade meters, we should recognize that with existing technology the extra cost of smart meters over conventional meters will not be justified for every customer.

Substantial institutional barriers to smart meters exist. Measurement Canada, the federal meter regulator, imposes far more cumbersome rules on smart meters than on the obsolete ones households now use.

The Ontario Energy Board’s cost recovery rules for distribution utilities also create additional hurdles for utilities and customers seeking to upgrade meters.

Consumers need a public agency, like the Ministry of Energy or the Independent Electricity Market Operator, to champion the cause of smart meters and clear away the institutional barriers impeding modernization.

Tom Adams
Executive Director, Energy Probe
Toronto

Posted in Power Generation in Ontario | Leave a comment

Weapons-grade uranium available in Canada

Posted on June 28, 2002 by energyprbe

Tom Adams

June 28, 2002

Dear Concerned Citizen:

Experts in nuclear weapons recognize that by far the most difficult step in building a bomb like the one that destroyed Hiroshima is acquiring sufficient weapons-grade material.

Yet a private Canadian multinational, MDS Nordion, has stockpiled almost two nuclear bombs’ worth of the material near Ottawa. And this company is trying to import enough from the U.S. to more than double its stockpile.

MDS – a medical supplier – likes to use weapons-grade uranium instead of other materials that are not attractive to terrorists and rogue states because it is convenient and profitable. As it said in 1999, “switching to safer, low-enriched uranium fuel would be too costly and too troublesome.” Some of MDS’s commercial competitors have installed or are installing modified processes that do not require the use of the nuclear-bomb ingredients.

Blinded by its commercial interests, MDS has failed to recognize its contribution to the risk of nuclear arms proliferation and global terrorism. When asked recently by the Ottawa Citizen about Canadian and U.S. watchdog groups’ concerns, a corporate vice president said, “It would be the first time that I’ve ever heard that Canada is a proliferation threat.”

To our disappointment, Canada’s government is less concerned about the proliferation implications of trafficking in weapons-grade uranium than the U.S. government. While the U.S. government has been trying to phase out commerce in weapons-grade uranium, our federal government’s own Atomic Energy of Canada is building two new reactors and a processing facility north of Ottawa on behalf of MDS that are designed to use the convenient but dangerous substance. These projects are proceeding poorly. AECL has experienced serious safety problems, delays, and cost overruns. One reactor was started up briefly, only to be shut down for extensive testing and renovation following a failed safety test. The other reactor has yet to be brought on line.

The delay in starting these reactors creates an opportunity to convert to a safer process that does not rely on weapons-grade uranium. If MDS is not forced to discontinue its commerce in weapons-grade uranium soon, it will be more expensive to convert to a safer system once the two new reactors are fully radioactive and the processing facility becomes contaminated.

There is a growing international consensus that to reduce risks to international security, reliance on weapons-grade uranium in research reactors, test reactors, and isotope production reactors should be eliminated. Canada is one of the last nations to engage in international trafficking in weapons-grade uranium.

If you agree that we should stop putting profits ahead of public safety, please contact Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bill Graham, and urge him to bring Canada into line with international efforts to cease all use of, and commerce in, weapons-grade uranium (see contact information, below).

And please consider a generous donation to Energy Probe. We are working with other citizens’ groups around the world to stop all production, stockpiling, and trafficking in weapons-grade material. Your tax-creditable, charitable donation will support us in this cause.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Adams
Executive Director

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Zoned hydro rates proposed for Ontario

Posted on June 27, 2002 by energyprbe

Joan Walters
Toronto Star/Torstar News Service
June 27, 2002

Ontario consumers would pay different power prices across the province in a zoned rate system being considered for the new electricity market.

The proposal – being pushed by the big private energy companies now operating in Ontario — would see a new pricing system that charges consumers according to where they live.

The suggestion that Ontarians in the north or rural areas might pay different rates than consumers in cities and suburbs led to a barrage of protests by public power advocates yesterday.

“This essentially means that the one-price system we’ve always had, the system that says we’re all equal citizens of Ontario, would be gone,” said NDP Leader Howard Hampton. “It means some consumers should be prepared to get whacked over the head.”

Few details on how zoned pricing would actually work have been made available by the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO), which is studying how to implement the zones.

Called “locational marginal pricing,” the system would differ dramatically from the uniform base rate that everyone in Ontario pays now.

“It hasn’t been fleshed out other than being an idea that needs to be explored and eventually implemented,” said Ted Gruetzner of the IMO.

“In simple terms, it means the price of energy could differ from place to place, depending on the cost of delivering it.”

Energy Minister Chris Stockwell’s office said the government has not decided whether it supports the concept, which has been studied since 1998.

“The IMO is still gathering data and deciding whether they will be going ahead,” said aide Diana Arajs.

But earlier this year, 80 major market players told a planning session organized by the IMO that zoned pricing was a top priority. They wanted it pushed hard, and implemented fast.

Tom Adams of Energy Probe, who was at that meeting, believes new pricing is the right step in ensuring a well operated, orderly market for Ontario.

“The system we have now is what’s referred to as a postage-stamp system,” Adams said. “It costs the same to put a stamp on an envelope to Vancouver as to send it across the street. That system is attractive from a social welfare point of view but it’s unattractive from an economic efficiency point of view.”

Zones might not take effect for a year to 16 months, the IMO said.

But the proposal is relevant now because about a million households have already signed fixed-price electricity contracts for three to five years, agreements which retailers now say would have to change if price zones arrive.

Union Energy Inc., which took over Ontario Hydro Energy Services in April, is already telling customers it may need to alter fixed-rate contracts if the IMO changes how prices are set.

The Ontario Energy Board is reviewing the terms of those 200,000 contracts for possible violations of the provincial energy retailing code.

And Union Energy has given customers an opportunity to get out of the contracts, within certain time limits outlined in notices sent this week.

Paul Kahnert of the Ontario Electricity Coalition, a public power group, said zone prices are outrageous.

“Under public power, your prices were uniform no matter where you lived,” Kahnert said. “Suddenly we’re looking at something where you get penalized for where you live.”

In American states where zones exist, rates generally are highest where it is most difficult to deliver power.

In New York, with 11 zones, Manhattan and Long Island have the highest prices because of congestion on transmission lines, and because they are most distant from power sources.

“It’s actually hardest to move power in the New York City area,” says Steve Sullivan of the New York Independent System Operator, the state’s equivalent to Ontario’s IMO.

New York has an open market with rates that fluctuate daily, like Ontario’s. Prices are set by bidding, as in Ontario.

In Ontario, it is thought that prices would be lowest in zones closest to the province’s major power sources, which are largely in urban southern Ontario, including Pickering, Darlington, Niagara Falls and the Golden Horseshoe.

Gruetzner, the IMO spokesperson, said it is important to note no studies have been done yet to see which parts of Ontario would have which rates.

Posted in Reforming Ontario's Local Electrical Distribution Sector | Leave a comment

Winter blackouts possible: Energy Probe

Posted on June 25, 2002 by Other News Sources

Richard Brennan
Toronto Star
October 25, 2002

“I think Ontario has now got a risk of blackout, possibly as early as this winter,” said Tom Adams, executive director of the industry watchdog group, “but next summer looks very dicey as well.”

Adams was reacting in part to news the start-up of the first of four Pickering A nuclear reactor units, expected by year’s end, will be delayed by as much as eight months. The four units, out of service since 1997 because of safety and reliability concerns, are considered a key part of Ontario’s power system.

“The electricity system is in a crisis . . . because we bet heavily on the restart of Pickering A . . . and now with Pickering A missing we’ve got nothing there to fill the gap,” he said.

Liberal MPP Sean Conway (Renfrew Nipissing Pembroke) told the Legislature yesterday a “very reliable source” within Ontario Power Generation informed him of the delays, which he says will lead to huge increases in electricity costs.

“I have been told . . . that we can expect only one of the four units at Pickering A available in the calendar year 2003,” Conway said. “The three remaining units at Pickering A . . . are not likely to be available . . . until at least 2004 and perhaps, in some cases, as late as 2005.”

OPG is to detail the return to service in its third quarter report expected next week, a spokesperson said yesterday.

Conway said the project is as much as $2 billion over budget.

Energy Minister John Baird told the Legislature he is “not happy” the project is behind schedule and over budget.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy filed a complaint under the federal Competition Act yesterday, saying Ontario is unfairly subsidizing traditional power sources at the expense of green power. The group says it’s tough for wind power to get on the grid when it costs at least 50 per cent more than other sources of electricity.

Posted in Nuclear Economics | Tagged nuclear costs | Leave a comment

Climate change theory ca. 1887

Posted on June 24, 2002 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
June 24, 2002

In the last half of the 19th century, conventional wisdom in North America held that the climate in the Prairies – the vast lands that comprise much of the continent – was changing. In the United States and Canada, tens of governments, thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of individuals spent fortunes in line with this wisdom – the only time in human history that great sums were spent in anticipation of climate change.

The conventional wisdom was wrong. The fortunes were lost. Even worse, it took us down a path that led to North America’s greatest environmental disaster of the 20th century, and to staggering social costs that still bedevil us today.

Before the climate change theories came into vogue more than a century ago, settlements had stopped at the Prairie’s edge. Everyone knew that the arid lands – dubbed the Great American Desert – could not be farmed. But for several years, above-average rainfall blessed large parts of the Prairies, fostering wishful theories that allowed people to think that the climate had changed, and with it the rules of agriculture. The most popular climate change theory held that “rain follows the plow,” as if areas received rain because they were farmed, and not the other way around. Under this belief, which many scientists soundly endorsed, plowing exposed the soil’s moisture to the sky. “It is the great increase in the absorptive power of the soil, wrought by cultivation, that has caused, and continues to cause an increasing rainfall in the State,” explained University of Nebraska scientist Samuel Aughey. With the soil broken, rain is absorbed “like a huge sponge.” Evaporation from the soil then increases rainfall.

Others theorized that the new transcontinental trains were stirring the atmosphere and changing the flow of moisture, letting rains fall in the Prairies that otherwise would have travelled further east. The staid Army and Navy Journal attributed the rains to the railroad having altered the atmosphere’s electrical condition. In accepting yet another climate change theory, The Nation stated in 1887 that the entire Prairies “will within a few years enjoy a rainfall sufficient to admit of raising crops without any considerable degree of artificial irrigation.”

The wishful theories suited the politics of the day. Governments on both sides of the border were determined to encourage settlements on the Prairies, as were the railroads and developers eager to cash in on these government policies. It would take decades before the mad theories were put to rest, partly because scientists who dissented from the conventional wisdom were finally heard, mostly because the Prairies reverted to their historic, arid state. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1896 Yearbook of Agriculture soberly concluded that “farmers have deluded themselves with the belief that with the breaking of soil . . . and bringing civilization, the climate was becoming more favorable to their operations.” The U.S. Geological Survey found that “fruitless and demoralizing movements of population” into the Prairies were occurring on the mistaken belief that “a radical change of climate” was taking place.

By then, much of the Prairies was overpopulated, creating vested interests to maintain farmers on land that could not safely sustain them. In his Report on the Arid Lands of North America, John Wesley Powell, perhaps the most prominent scientist of his day, recommended policies that would have slashed the farm population to one-sixteenth that planned, to avoid overpopulation.

He was ignored. Other theories that justified farming the desert arose, the theories spread like wildfire through government and farm lobby organizations, and settlers kept coming in droves. At the turn of the century, Stephen Leacock wrote in his history of Canada, two million people left Europe for the New World, the Prairies the destination for many of them.

The land could stand the strain for only so long. Residents of the northern Prairies would pay the consequences in a severe drought that hit between 1917 and 1921. Many farms failed then, but the worst was yet to come. The settlement of the Prairies soon produced the Dust Bowl, an unprecedented environmental disaster. With the native grasses plowed under for crop cultivation, and with intensive cultivation reducing the size of soil particles, the soil became dust when drought and high temperatures lowered the soil’s moisture. Winds then stripped areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta entirely of topsoil.

The first of the great dust storms swept across the northern plains in 1933. A May, 1934, dust storm that started in Montana carried some 350 million tons of soil toward the East Coast. Others were equally severe. The storms lasted until 1940.

The Prairie weather hadn’t changed, after all. But the Prairies have. Still overpopulated, and potent politically, if not economically, Prairie residents remain dependent on government payments for their sustenance, and delude themselves into thinking of droughts, rather than rain, as the exceptions. In 1690, the first European explorer in the Canadian Prairies, Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, called the Prairies “barren ground.” So it was and so it will remain, as long as Prairie policies continue to be based on fictions.

Posted in Costs, Benefits and Risks | Leave a comment