Sacrificing water for energy – natural gas – the last straw. 
Ontario a part of global community resisting fossil fuel energy
Ivona Vujica
ivujica@gmail.com
In five Ontario’s Northern York Region’s municipalities – King Township, Georgina, East and West Gwillimbury and Aurora – five energy corporations – TransCanada, EPCOR Energy, Pristine Power Inc., Northland Power Inc., and Sithe Global – specializing in privatization of energy – building, owning and operating of independent [fossil fuel based] power plants, are vying for communities’ approval.
Northern York Region is one of 32 municipalities from the Trent River in the east to the Niagara Escarpment in the west, which straddles Oak Ridge Moraine, a soft sandy terrain absorbing rain water and streamlining it into 65 waterflows in Ontario. It is a source of water – a watershed – place where rivers begin. Some call it Ontario’s water barrel and its green basket, “arching like a huge eyebrow above the eye of Canada’s largest city.” Nestled in such rich landscape, Northern York Region boasts prime agricultural land, ranches and equestrian farms.
We have a luxury to choose among different sources of energy. But we only have one water. Clean and accessible water should be the stick against which to measure appropriate sources of energy. Everywhere natural gas goes, people are up in arms to protect water from it. In Sacred Headwaters region of north west British Columbia, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, Arctic Chukchi Sea, and in Ontario’s Northern York Region, west of Toronto and in central Toronto, proposed natural gas operations sit on major watersheds and waterways.
In addition to climate chaos, loss of local water supplies is a major issue raised in the fight against natural gas.
We may recall that in a recent New York Times article “Hierarchy of Resources, Putting Water Ahead of Gas,”, the chairman of New York City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee and a geologist with experience in gas industry said, ‘We have only one drinking water system.’ [Marcellus gas shale drilling] is an activity that is completely and utterly inconsistent with a drinking water supply… This cannot happen. This would destroy the New York City watershed and for what? For short-term gains on natural gas?
In Mesquite, Nevada, we see its city council publicly opposes Sithe Global Toquop coal-fired plant. Their point is that “Our water is spoken for.” Toquop would need 2,500 acre-feet of water annually to operate. ‘Now [Sithe] needs to go somewhere else for water.’
‘There are a lot of unanswered issues’ in dealing with dirty methane gas drilling …’ and the biggest one is what impact it [Shell coal-bed methane drilling] will have on rivers,’ say municipal councils in Smithers and Prince Rupert together with Friends of Wild Salmon Sacred Headwaters, native bands and other environmental groups in northwest British Columbia. Their resolution calls for immediate suspension of any such exploration in the Skeena, Nass and Stikine watershed.
New Mexico Democratic Governor Bill Richardson and Attorney General Gary King together with New Mexico Environmental Department have intervened in a federal lawsuit (Sithe Global vs. Environmental Protection Agency) and on October 2nd have appealed a settlement which resulted in a premature EPA air permit for Sithe’s Desert Rock coal-fired plant in the Navajo-Hopi region, ditching environmental regulatory reviews including impact on fish and other wildlife.
The legitimacy of the Environmental Protection Agency is in question and recently 5 U.S. States are suing EPA for ignoring the reality of global warming.
Another bright light of hope are the Native village of Point Hope,Alaska, the City of Point Hope, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (ICAS), Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), The Wilderness Society and the Centre for Biological Diversity who among others filed a lawsuit against oil/gas drilling in Arctic Chukchi Sea.
Back in Canada, Oak Ridge Moraine is one of Ontario’s major watersheds and a target of natural gas operation. Ontario’s targeted municipal councils and citizen resister groups such as Georgina’s MegaWhat, King Township’s King Countryside Stewardship Alliance and Aurora’s Stop Transmission Lines Over People promise to protect its water. In their struggle, they are a part of a global community resisting natural gas operations and placing “the economic, environmental and human health of their citizens first.”
Sithe Global, owned by the world’s largest private equity corporation Blackstone Group, (whose CEO Stephen Schwarzman was proclaimed the “King of Wall Street”)
together with other corporations specializing in operation and ownership of fossil-fuel based energy production face staunch opposition in Ontario’s Mississauga, Brampton, Etobicoke and Oakville in the west, East/West Gwillimbury, Georgina, Aurora and King Township in the north, and in central Toronto.
Sithe Global CEO, together with CEOs of similar corporations, last year received a personal letter from US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in which he states that “state’s financial and ratepayer resources ’should be heavily focused on rapid and significant investments in clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.’” Reid says he’ll do everything in his power to stop these power plant projects.
It is painfully obvious that water trumps natural gas as a viable source of energy. The viable source of energy is the one which does not imperil water supplies. Natural gas is officially called a replacement strategy for coal, but what it replaces is not coal, but renewable and water friendly sources of energy. In fact, natural gas has promoted coal’ deadly greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into a commercial product sold to mining corporations for “enhanced recovery” of natural gas. This feature of CO2 has become especially attractive now that natural gas is mined from unconventional, hard-to-get places.
This is basically the Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens energy future plan. This is the same Pickens that funded the “Swift Boat” controversy that derailed Senator John Kerry in the last presidential election. A Texas billionaire who made his billions in oil and greenhouse gases, sees the light – “sees the profit” and it is natural gas. Public subsidies for fossil fuels, which is over a trillion dollars a year, will never end under his plan and the road to the new renewable energy economy will be sideswiped and imperil the Earth and all our lives. Picken’s plan is nothing more than the actor Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb in the movie Dr. Strangelove or Natural Gas the Bridge to Nowhere.
East Gwillimbury of Ontario’s Northern York Region leading by example
Not only geographically is East Gwillimbury heading Northern York Region which is straddling nine municipalities north of Toronto, but too politically, it is its leader in Environmental and Energy Planning.
Global Warming makes Energy management and planning central to the socio-economic and political life of every community in the world.
Has your community made it a rule to turn all existing and future infrastructure into energy retrofitted, 100% green buildings through a locally available mix of renewable energy, biogardens and energy efficiencies?
East Gwillimbury has recently become “the first Municipality in Canada to adopt Town-wide Energy Star® standards for new residential development and …the Leadership Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED) certification program for all industrial commercial institutions being built in this town.”
Their”Thinking Green!” Program is a juicy punch of “policies and action” which boldly unites economic growth, environmental protection and the quality of life of its residents. The cutting edge energy efficiency retrofits programs together with an integrated mix of renewable energy sources constitute East Gwillimbury’s most important ingredients in building capacity to “sustain its own communities.”
No wonder, when Ontario Power Authority gave away North York Region on a platter to five fossil fuel burning corporations competing to build a 350 peaking simple cycle natural gas plant at the beginning of year 2008, East Gwillimbury, the heart of the targeted region, offered back a flat and determined NO!
The surrounding targeted municipalities, West Gwillimbury, Georgina and Aurora, joined East Gwillimbury. After some initial hesitation possibly due to misplaced advice received from legal council working for Ontario Power Authority, the fifth targeted NYR municipality, King Township, said NO too.
In the midst of Global Warming, and peak-fossil fuels, Ontarians are wide-eyed and expectant of more than old energy tricks.
It is not difficult to see that kicking the ball to fossil and radioactive fuel mining and burning players in the game which requires more thought, planning and action than just mindless, old fashion energy procurement, won’t score a goal in Ontario’s net.
Why build a natural gas plant in the times when natural gas has peaked? Why build a natural gas plant in the times when burning fossil fuels is named “a crime against humanity” by one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world James Hansen, in reference to Global Warming, a planetary condition caused by burning fossil fuels? Why build a natural gas plant in the times when the only way to achieve affordable and secure source of energy is a locally operated and built publicly owned mix of integrated renewable energy sources?
That natural gas has run out is confirmed by a series of extreme actions taken by fossil fuel addicts such as opening up protected wilderness areas to fossil fuel mining and burning. From Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to offshore drilling on East and West Coast to lush green North York Region and all protected natural beauties in between; Turning coal into gas in coal gasification plants; mining gas from unminable sites such as coal bed methane seams, gas shale fracturing using millions gallons of fresh water a day; mining hydrocarbons from the bottoms of the oceans’ bottom, importing Liquefied Natural Gas, which is driving the need to war over its last remains.
That Ontario and Quebec are looking to Russia’s Arctic as a “secure source” for their critical energy infrastructure and liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the proposed GAZPROM-Rabaska liquefied natural gas facility, to be supplied by 2014, should prove that natural gas has peaked, is intermittent, insecure and dangerous. (For more info please see http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/stop-russia-gazprom-rabaska-lng-facility-in-canada/)
Deeper and wider, from further away and with the help of injecting greenhouse gas CO2 product sold by coal-fired plants; against unfaltering widespread resistance by people left, right and centre, and through wars, proceeds quest for natural gas. These conditions in addition to unstable and extreme global warming climate patterns signals the status of natural gas: insecure, unavailable, too expensive and a crime against humanity. Isn’t this a proof enough that natural gas supplies are over?
No proof of any kind is Ontario Power Authority (OPA) ready to show to account for its natural gas plants plans.. But, OPA is fast to point out that energy from renewable sources is unreliable – again without any proof to account for its claims.
Victory in five municipalities of Northern York Region against OPA should be celebrated; further links and partnerships with other regions in Ontario should be forged toward fully Green Ontario; research offices, legal offices, grassroots movements, renewable energy developers and planners offices should join together for Fully Green Ontario.
Northern York Region is leading the way to a new Energy Era in Ontario where fossil burning is outlawed. Ontarians heed and join this call!
In the struggle we should take a cue from the fossil fuel supporters: persistence against all odds. We will need it because gas companies haven’t left yet and Ontario government hasn’t sobered from giving in to gas.
When asked “What is Ontario Power Authority’s next step now that King Township, Georgina, East/West Gwillimbury and Aurora have rejected OPA’s plans to procure energy by building a natural gas plant in Northern York Region?” Ontario Power Authority’s position is we will hammer municipalities until they accept our plans as reflected in July 15 correspondence to this writer by Claire Willison, OPA’s Program Response Analyst and Corporate Communications Coordinator,
“The Ontario Power Authority understands that municipalities have passed resolutions declaring themselves to be unwilling hosts for the generation facility. The passage of such resolutions does not necessarily mean that these municipalities are not willing to work within the process. Municipal councils pass resolutions and motions on a wide range of subjects, and also many initial positions are reversed or modified as more information becomes available and/or circumstances change. An appraisal of experience across North America indicates that some municipalities take an initial stand in opposition to new developments until the impacts and benefits to the community are better articulated and understood.”
We should not forget that in ten short years, after all the wars over the control of vanishing fossil fuels, all the heavy drilling and newly manufactured wars over water, gas will be gone too. It is a finite fuel.
Today’s energy planning should be addressing the question “How will we live in ten to twenty years from now?” Only if this question was on the table, gas-coal wouldn’t stand a chance.
We would be in full steam preparations for rebuilding the foundations of our society with a 100% integrated mix of locally available publicly owned renewable energy, green spaces and energy efficiencies.
Additional references and info:
http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/
http://www.citizensfordixie.org/
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/stop-russia-gazprom-rabaska-lng-facility-in-canada/
