OPEN LETTER TO MISSISSAUGA, OAKVILLE, NYR, TORONTO, ETOBICOKE, MESQUITE COUNCILS, Sen. Harry Reid(D-Nev) , NAVAJO AND HOPI GRASSROOTS ORG etc., ON SITHE GLOBAL GIANT METHANE NATURAL
GAS PLANTS (AN ISSUE OF LOCAL, NATIONAL AND GLOBAL IMPORTANCE)
Dear Municipal Councils of Mississauga, Oakville, Toronto, NYR, Etobicoke and Mesquite.,
Sithe Global and OPA have crossed us all off.
We would like to congratulate you for refusing to host a natural gas plant in your community. Natural gas is an outdated and destructive energy source which has peaked and which does not bode well for anyone in the current context of Global Warming, impending carbon regulation and taxation and rising fossil fuel energy bills. With natural gas plants, we will face skyrocketing prices locked into twenty to thirty year contracts.
We would like to encourage you to transcend Ontario Power Authority’s / (OPA)’s divide and conquer scenario of pitting one council against the other in which only Sithe Global corporation can win.
“Build Power Somewhere else” http://www.themississauganews.com/article/16753
Even local community leader Jim Tovey, whose ratepayers group was credited with swaying political opinion away from the site, acknowledged that Lakeview’s gain may be someone else’s loss. “For our community, it’s a wonderful day. But for another community that’s going to have to take the new power plant, it’s not so wonderful,” he said yesterday. “Lakeview’s win is another’s community loss” http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/461868
Sithe’s victory will mean additional 850MW of privatized energy in Ontario made by burning fossil fuels in one of our municipalities, and diversion of precious resources from developing renewable energy sources.
“Coal Cessation in Ontario” http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/a-critical-review-of-the-ontario-regulation-49607-coal-cessation-and-its-amendment- implementation-of-coal-emissions-reductions/
We are calling Councils of Mississauga, Etobicoke, Toronto, NYR, Mesquite and Oakville to jointly ask OPA for 100% green infrastructure fitted with a locally suited mix of renewable energy sources ,conservation, energy efficiencies and biogardens. Kilometers of empty roofs and barren building walls in your municipalities are expectantly waiting for integrated renewable energy technologies!!
OPA is saying sun and wind are intermittent and therefore unreliable, but in fact, nuclear plants and fossil fuel plants go off-line all the time. OPA does not have a shred of scientific evidence to prove that intermittent nature of sun or wind is a problem to current renewable energy technologies especially if they complement each other, nor is OPA looking for ways to deal with it.
Besides, sun and wind are not the only sources of renewable energy. We should be looking for a locally-determined combination of geothermal, tidal waves, sun, wind, energy efficiencies, conservation, 100% green infrastructure and biogardens.
OPA is also saying that natural gas will provide us with energy, but again OPA does not have a shred of scientific evidence to prove their point , which would address issues such as natural gas supply availability, costs and short and long-term benefits to our communities in the current geo-political context of Global Warming and National Security.
OPA is operating on a lot of assumptions which we should not be taking for granted. Another example of a taken-for-granted assumption is the question of “the need for energy” which should be investigated in detail. Ontarians have become champions in energy conservation, presently using much less energy than they used to in the past. The question of types or sources of energy should be studied in terms of availability, cost, environmental impact, job creation, ownership and distribution, community self-sufficiency and sustainability etc.
But OPA is quick to ignore ample scientific evidence pointing to the fact that burning fossil fuels is a “crime against humanity.” ” NASA’s James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature..” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html
Creating 100% green infrastructure across Ontario would create a whole new “green” economy. It is what we should be doing in the face of the layoffs from the fossil fuel industry (automotive, airlines…).
Using renewable energy would keep energy prices down because renewable fuel is free and eliminates the need for mining and shipping. Low energy prices are the key to keeping and creating business in our communities.
OPA’s current energy mismanagement plan is bound to drive business out of Ontario and impoverish many people. OPA’s energy plan creates opportunities for the transnational corporation (Sithe) – but how about the rest of us? This precarious situation we are in is not only about our environment. It is also about our economy and jobs.
OPA is trying to artificially shape Ontario into a market for natural gas which would drive and be dependent on the natural gas mining and shipments from faraway places. This, however, is a huge problem. As conventional sources of natural gas have been sapped dry (remember natural gas is a finite fuel), gas is being pried opened from hard to get places such as coal bed methane deposits,
See: Northern councils urge Shell to halt methane hunt http://skeenawatershed.com/index.php/news/article/northern_councils_urge_shell_to_halt_methane_hunt/
gas shale, ocean’s hydrocarbons, from ole king coal (coal gasification), from third world countries through the process of liquefaction, which requires a lot of novel, bulky and unaffordably expensive plants, pipelines and shipments. In Canada gas does not go West to East. It goes North to South. Therefore, Ontario will be looking to Russia for Gas – sounds expensive, risky, and intermittent? (See GAZPROM – Quebec – RABASKA)
“Enbridge plans liquefied natural gas plant in Quebec” http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article/id28110
Using the Rabaska terminal, Gazprom, which is a subsidiary of OAO Gazprom, expects to import Russian LNG supplied from the Shtokman liquefaction project… In terms of the announcement about the agreement, construction is dependent on the first anticipated shipments of gas from the Shtokman field, which is scheduled for 2014.”
Canada’s largest supplier of electricity gas/coal plants is TransCanada which today is being bought buy Foreign Private Equity interests (US)-it is National Energy Security issue for US as TranCanada is about to build a $26 BILLION PIPELINE from Alaska-Alberta-US.
“TransAlta courted by $7.8 billion bid”
http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSN2139868920080721
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - LS Power Equity Partners and Global Infrastructure Partners said on Monday they aim to buy TransAlta Corp TA.TO for C$7.8 billion ($7.8 billion), just four months after an affiliate dropped a bid to control the power generator’s board.
For more information on unconventional sources of natural gas, please see: http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/keep-natural-gas-plants-out-of-north-york-region-sing-on/
“Reid says he’ll stop rural power projects” (that’s Harry Reid US Senate Majority Leader)
http://www.elynews.com/ articles/2007/08/01/news/news01.txt
“All these power moguls want to do is to steal our air and water,”.. Reid commented after sending letters to the heads of Reno-based Sierra Pacific Resources, Sithe Global Power LLC in New York, LS Power in New Jersey and Dynegy Inc. in Texas. Sierra Pacific and Sithe Global have separate projects while LS Power and Dynegy are developing the third project…
In his letter, Reid said he’s strongly opposed to the plants and the state’s financial and ratepayer resources “should be heavily focused on rapid and significant investments in clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.”Rather than spend billions of dollars on the plants, Reid said the money could be used to install solar systems on several hundred thousand homes around Nevada…
[Sithe speaking OPA’s language – but no scientific evidence:] Johns added that Sithe Global is developing renewable energy sources but “there’s clearly a need for base-load power that’s available 24 hours a day.” Coal-fired plants provide that but sources such as solar or wind power are variable, he added.
Ontarians are ready for the green economy, but this is difficult to have as long as our leaders are supporters of and/or belong to the fossil fuel cartel. It is our job to wean this type of addicts” leaders” from dangerous dinosaur diet.
We need to be staunchly demanding that which will benefit each of our communities in a holistic way. With environmentally friendly renewable energy technology, we get to have better environment and better health, but also a better, job-creating economy.
Letting OPA get away with “natural gas plants” puts us all in unprecedented dangers and Energy Insecurity.
We need to work together. We must not let OPA pit one community against another. This happened in Ontario’s Northern York Region over a natural gas plant as well. However, four municipal councils finally stood up to OPA together.
“[A] proposed 350MW natural gas plant in Northern York Region (NYR) … would discharge its poison into Oak Ridge Moraine watershed which feeds “65 waterflows discharging into Georgian Bay, Lakes Simcoe, Scugog, Rice and Ontario.” It would also necessitate building roads and pipelines. Paving over Moraine’s sandy and soft terrain would interrupt percolation and filtering of water and would lead to drying up of the waterways.”
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com/re-an-outdated-vision-being-dressed-up-as-a-good-decision/
We need councils of Mississauga, Etobicoke, Mesquite, and Oakville to join in the common struggle for green, renewable energy with the Northern York Region councils of Georgina, King Township, Aurora and East Gwillimbury.
Ontario should be working with renewable energy developers and planners, power utilities and politicians to create renewable energy supplies for everyone.
This is not only a municipal problem. This is happening all over Ontario and we need to get organized and connected.
The issue at stake is deep-rooted transformation of our economy. Let’s not let OPA to hold us down. Every community must support each other for our collective health, security and economy.
WHERE DOES NATURAL GAS COME FROM?
Natural gas is a finite fuel and its conventional sources have been sapped dry. Presently, natural gas is mined from unconventional, hard to get places such as coal-bed methane deposits, from coal gasification, gas shale and below bottom of the oceans. Natural wildlife habitats are pried open to gas mining promising to yield this finite fuel for the next decade or so. But then… what? Using gas won’t prepare us for times when the present recoverable gas leftovers are consumed to the last drop. It is too late to in 2020 start thinking about what to do about our energy after all gas is gone. We need to focus on procuring an integrated mix of renewable sources of energy right now.
There is a global resistance to natural gas mining and burning due to its extreme and irreversible destructiveness of natural environment. Approving natural gas plants in Ontario amounts to approving of natural gas mining. Due to this, communities who are resisting natural gas mining should be acquainted with the situation of building natural gas plants in Ontario.
For example, communities in Sacred Headwaters region of northwest British Columbia as well as communities in Chukchi sea in the Arctic are fighting proposed natural gas mining and should be informed about Ontario’s official energy plan driving such destructive practices at the cost of their environment and lives, as well as about Ontario’ s local struggles against natural gas burning.
- “Native Group Opposes Mining on Sacred Site”
http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/newsstories/nativeGroupOpposesMining
“Almost wherever coal-bed methane goes there’s opposition to it because it’s such a destructive type of fossil fuel extraction”… And there’s plenty of opposition in B.C. South of the Sacred Headwaters, the residents of the Bulkley Valley, including the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, have waged an effective campaign against a proposed coal-bed methane field adjacent to the village of Telkwa. Demonstrations against the project have seen over 600 protesters take to the streets of Smithers, a town of only 5,000 people. In 2003, the Union of B.C. Municipalities unanimously passed a resolution asking the government for a moratorium on coal-bed methane mining in the province.
A flashpoint in the Tahltan’s struggle with Shell occurred in 2005, when four Shell Canada employees who came to the band office in Iskut were turned away by a group of elders and children. The elders read an eviction notice and the employees left.
Shell has filed a lawsuit against three of the elders for loss of revenue. “They’re suing these people who have nothing,”… “There are millions upon millions of dollars in resources being pumped out of their territories every year and they don’t even have a teacher for their school; they don’t have a hospital, a community centre, or lights for their hockey rink.”
- “Opposition Builds Against Drilling Arctic’s Chukchi Sea”
http://www.wilderness.org/NewsRoom/Release/20080131.cfm
Thirty million acres of key polar bear, walrus, and whale habitat in the Chukchi Sea are scheduled to open to oil and gas companies on February 6, when the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) plans to hold bidding for drilling leases.
- “Alaska Natives, Ecologists oppose oil drilling in Chukchi Sea”
http://intercontinentalcry.org/alaska-natives-ecologists-oppose-chukchi-sea-oil-drilling/
Last week, a coalition of indigenous people and environmental groups filed a lawsuit aimed at halting the massive oil drilling project in the Chukchi Sea.
Consisting of the Native Village of Point Hope, the City of Point Hope, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (ICAS), Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), as well as The Wilderness Society and the Center for Biological Diversity, among several others – the coalition argues that the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) should not have gone ahead with it’s recent decision to open up bidding to oil and gas companies because they failed to address a number of key issues.
It is a failure that seems to have been deliberate. A recent news release by part of the coalition explains that the Interior department,
[...] has apparently ignored warnings by their own scientists that the agency “failed to fully assess the potential impacts of a lease sale in the area. The administration has also been criticized internationally for blocking scientists’ policy recommendations in a recent report on drilling by the eight-nation Arctic Council.”
SITHE GLOBAL ? A THREAT TO GLOBAL SURVIVAL!
***The Sithe are owned by the world’s largest private equity corporation BLACKSTONE***
NEVADA
“Sithe Global cancels water contract”
http://www.citizensfordixie.org/content/view/1261/301/
The Mesquite city council (Nevada) has gone on record as opposing construction of the [Sithe's proposed 1 billion 750MW] Toquop [coal-fired] plant…
Toquop would need 2,500 acre-feet annually to operate. “The Lincoln County developers agreed to sell 2,500 acre-feet of water out of their next allotment, if they were going to get it approved by the state engineer,” said Mike Winters, Virgin Valley Water District general manager. “Now they (Sithe global Power) needs to go somewhere else for water.”
“Our water’s spoken for.”
“Reid says he’ll stop rural power projects” (that’s Harry Reid US Senate Majority Leader)
http://www.elynews.com/ articles/2007/08/01/news/news01.txt
“All these power moguls want to do is to steal our air and water,”.. Reid commented after sending letters to the heads of Reno-based Sierra Pacific Resources, Sithe Global Power LLC in New York, LS Power in New Jersey and Dynegy Inc. in Texas. Sierra Pacific and Sithe Global have separate projects while LS Power and Dynegy are developing the third project…
In his letter, Reid said he’s strongly opposed to the plants and the state’s financial and ratepayer resources “should be heavily focused on rapid and significant investments in clean renewable energy and energy efficiency.”Rather than spend billions of dollars on the plants, Reid said the money could be used to install solar systems on several hundred thousand homes around Nevada…
[Sithe speaking OPA’s language – but no scientific evidence:] Johns added that Sithe Global is developing renewable energy sources but “there’s clearly a need for base-load power that’s available 24 hours a day.” Coal-fired plants provide that but sources such as solar or wind power are variable, he added.
ONTARIO
Sithe Global wants to build another huge gas plant in Ontario. Local people and politicians from King Township, Georgina, East Gwillimbury, Aurora Mississauga, Oakville, Etobicoke and Toronto have said “NO.”
“Natural Gas Plants Not an Answer to Phasing Out of Coal Fired Plants”
NEW MEXICO
Sithe Global also wants to build a huge coal-fired plant “Desert Rock” on Navajo land in New Mexico. There, the Sithe and its supporters has responded to resistance of Navajo and Hopi Elders with unprecedented acts of cruelty against gentle grandmas and grandpas. “Dog ’skinned alive’ Grisly sight greets power plant resisters’”
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/dec/121606lw_dogskinnedalive.html
Sithe also sued Environmental Protection Agency to force a premature EPA’s decision on air permit through a settlement, trying to avoid regulatory considerations of its proposed Desert Rocks’ impact on threatened species, consideration of carbon dioxide pollutant levels, compliance with new federal standards for ozone, and the maximum achievable control technology standards for hazardous air pollutants.
Supported by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, New Mexico Democratic Attorney General Gary King, together with New Mexico Environment Department have “filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit,”
meant “to skirt the legal requirements for a new coal-fired power plant to be built in the state…”
“AG seeks to slow coal-fired plant’s approval process”
http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/214082-ag-seeks-to-slow-coal-fired-plants-approval-process
Ivona Vujica, Coordinator
Paradigm Shift Environmental Alliance
http://floodiceorfire.wordpress.com
CC: NYR councils, Toronto council, Ontario MPPs, BC MPP’s, Federal MP’s, Energy stakeholders,
Renewable Energy Associations in Ontario, concerned US local councils, New Mexico Gov., Headwaters region councils and concerned groups, Chukchi Sea region councils and concerned groups, Ontario Premier etc.
