Lee Greenberg, Gary Dimmock
Ottawa Citizen
September 28, 2002

Barrett Chute’s generating turbines, at the end of the ‘power canal’ shown at centre, could not pass water fast enough on June 23. The spillway, shown on the right behind a dam, was opened like a safety valve to relieve pressure on the turbines.
– Ottawa Citizen

How the provincial hydroelectric utility responds to demands for power is in the midst of a revolution. If 1906 was the beginning of life for public hydro in Ontario, then 1995 was the beginning of the end.

And May 1, 2002 – less than two months before the tragedy at High Falls – marked a definite watershed in the provincial history of power production.

In 1906, Sir Adam Beck, a Tory MPP and mayor of London, recommended the creation of the Hydro Electric Power Commission. Coal strikes in Pennsylvania four years earlier had cut off Ontario’s power supply and shut down factories, convincing Canadian officials that an autonomous electricity utility was badly needed. It was formed that same year under the mantra of "power at cost to the people of Ontario."

With Beck as its charismatic leader, Hydro grew at an astonishing pace. By 1917 it had become one of the world’s largest hydroelectric utilities. "Nothing is too big for us," Beck famously declared in 1914. "Nothing is too expensive to imagine. Nothing is too visionary."

But by the time the international financier and environmentalist Maurice Strong took over the utility in 1992, Beck’s declaration loomed like a dark cloud. Ontario Hydro was an unwieldy, creaking "corporation in crisis," according its new chairman. And with Hydro facing a $34-billion debt, not many disagreed.

So in July 1995, after chopping 10,000 jobs, Mr. Strong recommended that the company be privatized.

That must have been music to the ears of Conservative premier Mike Harris, who had just been elected to office on his neo-conservative platform, the Common Sense Revolution.

In May 1999, after much consultation, Ontario Hydro was split into five companies. The two most visible were the commercial spinoffs: Ontario Power Generation would be the company that competed with other generators in a new electricity marketplace; Hydro One was set up to transmit, distribute and retail electricity, taking care of the power lines that span the province.

The two companies with a lower profile were the Electrical Safety Authority, which deals with setting safety standards, and the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation, a company set up to deal with servicing and paying down Ontario Hydro’s stranded debt.

The fifth entity, the Independent Market Operator, would be the agency at the heart of it all. It would match the buyers and sellers of electricity, creating and regulating the new marketplace. It is, essentially, the "grid operator," ensuring that the same amount of power being used by consumers is generated by such companies as OPG.

"We decide every day how much power you’re going to need based on temperature, time of year, time of week and time of day," says the IMO’s Ted Gruetzner. "That is given out every day, saying this is what we think the demand curve will look like. And then the sellers of power will offer into that market."

Every half-hour or so, OPG lets the market operator know how much energy it can provide and at what cost. This is called bidding, and it is treated as a commercial contract. So if OPG says that it can provide 50 megawatts of power at $100 a mw from Barrett Chute, then it is then responsible for providing that energy at that price at that time.

The IMO takes this information, matches it with its demand schedule – a forecast of electricity consumption – and chooses the cheapest sources of power.

The original date for launching the system had been set for March 2000, but the wholesale change in operations made that target impossible to meet. So it was delayed.

The system was finally switched on this spring, radically altering a century-old supply-and-demand system for power in the province. June 23 fell on the 54th day of the new electricity marketplace.

The new system was based on a straightforward free-market rationale: If hydro employees could appreciate the value of the commodity they were creating, they would make more commercially sound decisions.

However, they were accustomed to a Crown corporation culture that needed adjusting. So OPG contracted the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management to create a tailor-made MBA program for senior executives, many of whom had only ever worked for a public-sector monopoly.

"We needed to get everyone up to speed quickly and into that commercial mindset," OPG executive vice-president John Murphy told the National Post.

In the wake of the High Falls tragedy, Mr. Conway raised questions at Queen’s Park about whether adjusting to the new marketplace might have contributed to what happened.

"Have hydroelectric generators changed their operating procedures to contemplate changes that are occasioned by the open and competitive electricity market as compared to procedures those hydroelectric generators might have had in the pre-May 1, 2002, marketplace?" he asked Energy Minister Chris Stockwell. "Several of my constituents, long-time residents of the Calabogie area, believe that a significant part of the tragedy . . . had to do with changes in the operating procedures of the hydroelectric stations that have long been established on the lower Madawaska River."

—

At the tree line, Adam stood next to his father. He looked up and said: "They’re gone. Now we have to go get help."

They ran down the ledge, along the side of the channel, with the water still gushing and sending other sunbathers cascading down the falls and into the bay below.

The Mad River raged for more than an hour before hydro workers finally closed the sluice gates.

—

Hydroelectric dam operators sit in front of an imposing control panel. That’s always been there. But two computers, one a soft-screen machine operated by touch and another one with a mouse, are new.

The systems that were installed to help OPG communicate with the IMO were installed by Innogy, a giant power generator and supplier which itself had emerged phoenix-like from deregulation in Britain to become a multibillion-dollar generator and supplier of electricity.

With that software, the Innogy America Web site trumpets that "every operator has the complete set of tools to make the appropriate commercial decisions."

And, it adds, "in the deregulated market, they truly are commercial decisions, not just technical or operational decisions as in the past."

Innogy sent software specialist Robin Gomm, from head office in Swindon, England, to install the system in Toronto.

Innogy’s Electronic Dispatch and Logging software provides an electronic means of receiving dispatch instructions from the IMO. Those instructions are shaped by the amount of energy OPG indicates it can produce and by the amount of power the IMO indicates it needs.

An instruction from the IMO – and they can come every few minutes – can’t be missed.

"It will pop up on the screen automatically to them and sound an alarm saying ‘a new instruction has arrived from the IMO,’ " said Mr. Gomm, describing in general terms how the system works.

Operators have only 20 seconds to respond to the instructions. But Mr. Gomm says that the way the system was configured, orders would come in prevalidated. Rubberstamped.

In other words, on June 23, it wouldn’t have mattered if an operator spotted a potential problem with carrying out an IMO instruction. OPG had indicated it could produce a certain amount of electricity from a certain generating station, and the IMO had responded by placing its order.

Mr. Gomm says the computer network wouldn’t have allowed operators to fully operate the dams along the Madawaska. They would have received orders to produce energy, and even if they thought filling the orders might have caused problems, they would have been forced to accept them.

"Twenty seconds isn’t enough really for them to do it," said Mr. Gomm, explaining how the new "five-minute market" for electricity in North America depends upon constant monitoring of prices by the IMO and instant response to power purchases by generating stations.

"So we accept it on their behalf and they have to follow it."

But what if an operator sees that following the instructions could cause problems?

Mr. Gomm says the way the system was set up, even problematic instructions are accepted and carried out. Flawed transactions would be logged so that the IMO and OPG can review them later and gradually work out the kinks in the demand-supply relationship.

"It’s like saying, when you get in your car to drive home, ‘The maximum speed of my car is 100 miles per hour.’ And if someone comes along and tells you to drive at 110, you would say, ‘I can’t drive at 110, I can only drive 100.’ But you’d still try to do it. And that’s what they do now."

Mr. Gomm says the power generators "are relying on the grid controllers (the IMO) to send through valid instructions."

When he was reached for comment in early July, Mr. Gomm was heading to Toronto to meet with OPG officials.

Exactly how IMO-OPG transactions affected what happened at Barrett Chute on June 23 is one of many unknowns yet to be explained by the agencies or the investigators. But a source familiar with OPG operations has informed the Citizen that, since the incident at High Falls, orders from the IMO are no longer coming in "rubberstamped."

—

Now at the bottom of the falls, Mike saw Aaron floating in the bay. He swam out, brought him to shore and tried desperately to revive him. An ambulance arrived and raced him to hospital. But it was too late.

—

Entries in an OPG log book from June 23 were leaked. They said that at 12:30 p.m., the Mountain Chute generating station – the dam just upstream from Barrett Chute – was ordered to make more energy than expected.

Mountain Chute was releasing more water than the next dam down the line, Barrett Chute, could handle that day. And no one was there to witness it.

Though the dam is controlled remotely, from the Chenaux plant on the Ottawa River, a 25-person maintenance crew works at Barrett Chute weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. On Sundays, a handful of operators overseeing the Madawaska generating stations sit in front of computer screen at Chenaux, a world away from High Falls.

Mountain Chute’s response to the increased demand for power and the IMO’s request to rev up was to begin sending water through its turbines at a rate of 398 cubic metres per second. Normally, Barrett Chute’s four generating units downstream would have had enough capacity to deal with the extra inflow. But as fate would have it, there were only three units operating that Sunday.

One of the four Barrett generating "units" was down for maintenance. The station could only process 289 cms.

With that fourth generator working, Barrett Chute could have handled the difference. But with it down, choices about what to do were reduced to one. Water was racing toward Barrett Chute dam at a rate which could not be sent through its turbines. The only option left was to release water through the emergency spillway.

"Barrett Chute . . . will not be able to sustain inflow for extended period of time," the log reported. "Staff dispatched to Barrett Chute to initiate spill."

Exactly what was done to warn sunbathers and other people before water was released above High Falls remains unclear.

"Our policy is to try to warn people," said OPG spokesman John Earl in the aftermath of the tragedy.

And some people were warned. But those warned were farthest away: three boaters and several ATV riders, according to police, all well downstream at Calabogie Lake, more than two kilometres from where the Cadieuxs and others had been bathing.

Chuck Pautler, vice-president of public affairs at OPG, described how dam operators can also issue a "water warning" by sending "a small amount over a period of time" as a means of sending bathers a message that a flood will follow.

"It’s enough to let people know that they should get out of the water," he told the Citizen after the accident.

But there were no sirens, no loud horns.

Still, any OPG employee who walked atop the dam wall would have seen the Cadieuxs plopping down slides at High Falls. Presumably, no one saw – or even checked – the area below the spillway gate.

Since the tragedy occurred, Mr. Stockwell has ordered physical inspections at all hydro dams across Ontario and a full review of operational procedures.

Finally, High Falls has been plastered with signs reading "Dangerous Waters. Keep Away. Rapid Changes in water level and flow without warning."

 

New signs of danger: Ontario Power Generation has posted new warning signs and conducted a safety awareness blitz since the June 23 tragedy at its Barrett Chute Generating Station. The station is part of a chain of hydroelectric dams run by OPG along a stretch of the Madawaska River that has an elevation change four times greater than Niagara Falls. – Ottawa Citizen

But six "No Trespassing" signs put up in the aftermath of the deaths quickly disappeared, according to OPG spokesperson Bill McKinlay. "In several instances trespassing charges have been laid."

—

Mike Cadieux is a grieving man. But he is also an angry man. "It shouldn’t have happened, but it did," he says. "We lost two beautiful people."

He lays blame for the loss of his wife and son squarely on Ontario Power Generation.

"They did wrong," he insists.

There was no warning about the flood, he says, and not a sign along the well-worn path leading to the falls.

"This was not an accident. This was a controlled happening."

Nobody, he fumes, even bothered to look down from the dam to see if the coast was clear.

"How do you miss a safety step like that? I just really hope that they change the way they do business. Remember, this is a company that prides itself on safety-first."

He pauses, then adds: "We’ll always have the memory of that day until the minute they took it away."

Several weeks after the deaths, the Citizen returned to High Falls and retraced the family’s steps. Every single stick of wood and piece of garbage had been swept to a new place. The wall of water had come and gone twice – first on June 23, then two weeks later when police first on June 23, then two weeks later when police recreated the disaster to try to understand what had happened.

Somehow, through all of that, Cyndi’s wallet had remained untouched on the ground and was discovered by two reporters. It was still filled with tiny pebbles and sand from the raging waters.

The wallet was returned to Cyndi’s mother, Donna Brydges, later that day.