From the Chronicle-Herald:
Premier Darrell Dexter had a private meeting Monday with the president of Newfoundland’s energy corporation in an attempt to have electricity from the Lower Churchill Falls hydro project go through Nova Scotia.
Dexter apparently thinks the project is going somewhere and that there is any intention to run a power line through Nova Scotia.
Danny Williams hasn’t even been able to convince Hydro-Quebec to take an ownership stake in the project currently valued – not at $6 billion as claimed by the Herald – but at more like $10 billion. Heck, he even got bitched slapped into an emergency session of the legislature after his legal drafters tried a childish bit of word-play to screw with the 1961 Churchill Falls lease.
On top of that, the province’s finances are apparently so tight they have to cut health care despite having billions flowing in oil revenues.
There are no – that’s right: no – customers for the project. A potential deal with Rhode Island has been buggered up. And that’s something the Premier once described as being “very,very” crucial to the project.
The land claims deal vital to getting the project going is lost in the wilderness.
The timetable on the project has been pushed back repeatedly and there are even rumours swirling now the thing will be sent back for a major environmental overall because the first set of environmental documents submitted to the federal assessment process were grossly deficient.
And, most amazingly of all given Dexter’s efforts to get in at the front end, there just are no plans whatsoever to run a power line from Labrador anywhere near Nova Scotia.
If the Nova Scotians is fronting any money for this thing or even thinking of dropping cash on the Lower Churchill, he is being snookered, big time.
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