A new Sprung Greenhouse in the wilds of Labrador

Insecurity is not a good trait in leaders.

Among local politicians it tends to come across with boasting or, in the more recent examples, with nasty personal digs at other people for supposedly having the faults the politician readily displays.

You can see this, by the way in Kathy Dunderdale.  She delights in telling everyone else how stupid, ill-informed or lazy they are.

In the House of Assembly on Monday, Opposition leader Yvonne Jones asked Dunderdale about comments made on the weekend by former Conservative finance minister John Collins. 

The octogenarian came out of a self-enforced silence just to point put that the provincial government hasn’t really explained this Muskrat Falls thing to anyone in the province.  He also took pains to criticise the logic Dunderdale’s administration is using.

Her reply?

In that article [former finance minister John Collins] also stated that he did not have much information on the project. Like her, he decides to speak and find out later.

And to Jones on one of the questions:

Therein lies the danger of going down this road, Mr. Speaker, because her ignorance is so vast.

John Collins, incidentally, is no slouch. He and his colleagues at the time – including Bill Marshall – understood very well the economics of Lower Churchill hydro-electric power. They knew that the thing should only be developed if export markets paid for the project.  The smaller of the two dams – Muskrat Falls – would then come along as a bit of a freebie to give power to the island or anywhere else it could be sold profitably.

Collins also knows that the province already had the federal government on the hook for the project through the Lower Churchill Development Corporation.  That was the provincial Crown corporation created in a deal between Frank Moores’ administration provincially and Pierre Trudeau’s federally in 1978.  Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale scrapped it in 2008 only now to have to go cap-in-hand to Ottawa looking for a promise of far less than what they would have done through LCDC.

Anyway, the funny thing is, of course, that whenever Dunderdale actually does explain anything even in a very simplistic way,  she usually confirms what Jones has been saying.  The project doesn’t make economic sense and taxpayers in the province are going to be shafted with enormous electricity bills and public debt.

Some electricity might go off to other places but the sale of it will be subsidised by local taxpayers.  That’s the opposite of what every provincial administration since Joe Smallwood wanted to do.  They wanted to have the exports subsidise the costs for people in Joe Batt’s Arm and Quirpon.  Kathy wants the people of Grey River to pony up so some people in far wealthier places have cheap power.

Do not simply believe that because it is written here. 

Look at what Dunderdale said in the House on Monday.  She admitted that the Muskrat Falls project will produce power that is too costly for export:

Mr. Speaker, Nova Scotia needs power. They need power and they can provide it to themselves for 10 cents or 11 cents a kilowatt hour. They are not going to buy it from us, Mr. Speaker, for 14.3, so we have to go into the market and sell at what the market can bear.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Dunderdale makes it clear she has no idea of basic economics when she tries to claim that this export of discount power will actually lower the cost of producing electricity and reduce the price paid by consumers in the province:

Now, Mr. Speaker, we can let the excess water spill out over the dam and not get anything for it, but we can sell it where there is a market and we can decrease that 14.3 cents further for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Right off the bat, everyone will recall that Dunderdale has already stated that the project is being paid for based on forcing domestic consumers to bear the full cost and Nalcor’s profit on the project.  That’s the basic premise of her statement and it is something Dunderdale and others in her administration have said from the time Danny Williams announced this deal;  it works without a federal loan guarantee or exports.  Local ratepayers will carry the cost and, if need be, the provincial government will drop oil money into the thing as well.

Then consider that the figure of 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour is actually the low-end estimate for the cost of producing power at Muskrat Falls.  It isn’t the price consumers in the province will pay.  It’s the cost.

And it is the lowest cost estimate.

In an interview with CBC Radio’s St. John’s Morning Show last fall, Dunderdale figures of between $143 and $165 per megawatt hour to produce power at Muskrat Falls.  That translates to between 14.3 and 16.5 cents per kilowatt hour.  If that’s what it costs to produce power just at Muskrat Falls, then the cost to domestic consumers will actually much higher than that.

But here’s the thing, if it costs 14.3 cents to produce the electricity, it will cost more than that to ship it to market. Those power lines cost something to build so those loans have to be paid back.  At the same time there are maintenance costs and so forth.

So right off the bat, just getting the power from Labrador to the border of the province will likely cost more than 14.3 cents.

If it goes to Nova Scotia, that’s one thing but since they already get 35 years of free power under this deal, then let’s push it a bit beyond.

Maine?  New Brunswick?  Ontario?

Take your pick.

Then start adding on the costs to send power down the lines to those places.  Wheeling power through Quebec already costs Nalcor something like $19 million annually in wheeling fees under the April 2009 deal, for example.

Incidentally, on that deal, the provincial energy corporation is actually losing bags of money because the price they get for the power is far less than the cost of making it and shipping it.

So with Muskrat Falls, 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour to produce the juice becomes the better part of 20 cents of cost just to get the power to some place like Ontario  by the time you whack on the handling charges. The farther you ship it, the more expensive it becomes and the more the consumer will have to pay just for Nalcor to break even.

Now go back and look at what Dunderdale said about export markets:

They are not going to buy it from us, Mr. Speaker, for 14.3, so we have to go into the market and sell at what the market can bear.

Right.

Nalcor will sell power on export markets for less than it costs to produce it and get it to market.

Talk about a recipe for disaster.

It’s essentially the problem Brian Peckford and his colleagues ran into with the Sprung greenhouse.  They spent about a buck and a half to produce each cucumber which they then sold for about fifty cents in local grocery stores.

Some basic math and you can see pretty quickly that they lost a dollar on every cuke. 

Lucky for them and taxpayers in the province that the Sprung fiasco only cost about $23 million before the government had to shut it down.

Muskrat Falls is supposed to cost at least $6.2 billion.  That assumes that their estimates are accurate and that they can build the power lines and the dam for less than what they would have cost in 1998.

And that doesn’t allow for the fact that since 2003, this administration routinely delivers projects that are years behind schedule and 70% or more over budget.

This could very well wind up being  a gigantic Sprung greenhouse in the wilds of Labrador. 

And if it does, we won’t need Kathy Dunderdale to us all who was stupid.

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The seven percent solution

Mark Griffin, former traitor, spouts the new government policy for rural development which is, to be sure exactly the same policy as other every other government before (save one) that didn’t have any idea what to do to develop the economy successfully either:  shift public service jobs into town and create new public service ones.

Send us a prison says lawyer Mark and quickly too before all that “political capital” is burned up.

Mark.

Bubbie.

We are in a pre-election period.

It could be we are in a pre-leadership period on top of that.

Over the next two years there’ll be no shortage of political will to distribute scarce tax dollars around on any scheme  - no matter how useless, no matter that it has been tried and failed before - that might pay for a few more votes.

Forget a prison.

Dream big.

Think of a gigantic greenhouse for growing things like cucumbers and tomatoes.

Just because it failed before doesn’t mean it can’t be useful again to get that last seven percent.

Mark Griffin, former traitor, may well have hit on the way to get that last seven percent of people fully satisfied.

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What would Beaton do?

If you can’t build ‘em a greenhouse, then the next best thing for a government bereft of any ideas is create some government jobs handing out government cheques.

"Our government is committed to creating jobs in all regions of the province," said the Honourable Susan Sullivan, MHA for Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans. "The establishment of this new office in Central Newfoundland further emphasizes the commitment that has been made to support the residents living in this region."

The new office in Grand Falls-Windsor will employ 25 people sending cheques to people who are helping to save the race from extinction.  The office workers will also hand out money to help people pay their home heating bills.

The whole thing sounds awfully familiar.

Frighteningly familiar.

 

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Of Cukes and Unis

Truly, things are very strange when the guy who backed a second university for the province  - despite evidence at the time of declining enrolment – laces into critics who don’t like the much less ambitious version of “Grenfell autonomy” announced by the provincial government before Christmas.

For Former Williams administration employee Alex Marland, Premier Danny Williams attack on people inside the province must come as a complete shock. Anger isn’t always for reform, Alex. 

But the most bizarre part of the Premier’s speech in Corner Brook on Thursday was the comparison between Grenfell College and the Sprung greenhouse fiasco over two decades ago.

“With the situation of declining enrolment, we want to make sure we don’t launch this initiative and it fails and Grenfell becomes the Sprung (Greenhouse) of the west coast,” said Williams.

For those who don’t know, Sprung was the disastrous decision that spelled the end of Brian Peckford’s third administration.

Now Sprung didn’t fail because its proponents failed to support the government decision and prove the idea could work.

Sprung failed because it was doomed from the start.  Senior provincial government officials warned against the magnificent claims of the proponents, claims like growing more cucumbers in a hydroponic greenhouse in Newfoundland than could be grown with the near perpetual sunlight of a city near the Equator.

Unfortunately for the provincial treasury, that is for taxpayers, the politicians involved ignored the sound advice they got from people who warned of problems with the whole scheme and instead poured cash into the project.

In the Grenfell case, there is no sign any government officials voiced objections.  Others, like your humble e-scribbler and a bunch of people at Memorial University did point out that – among other things – the whole scheme the provincial government endorsed (the Premier included) was built on a model that needed Grenfell enrolment to double in 10 years.

One of those people – one Eddie Campbell – paid a price for speaking his mind.  That mess over finding a new president for the university led to a second major crisis for the university on top of the Grenfell one, both of which were driven entirely by politicians around the cabinet table.

And as for enrolment at Grenfell, it hasn’t been working its way to double in a decade.  Far from it.  Enrolment has been sliding steadily downward but not from lack of effort by the good people at Grenfell.  Rather, there just aren’t the students or prospective students to fill the seats.

They also endorsed the whole idea based on little more, apparently, than a rather lightweight assessment of the whole idea of Uni Two concept. That study was bought and paid for by the politicians, not by the proponents of the project.  And the study would also have figured out the enrolment problem since the signs were there at the time. 

The consultants would have figured that out if they had actually bothered to look at the issue.  Odd that they didn’t give it a thought, given that enrolment – students – is one of the big things that would drive a university’s success in the first place. 

All in all, it seems to have been a very odd first speech in the New Year for the Premier in his district.  It’s not odd that he chose the occasion to pick a fight with people or react negatively to anything less than an outpouring of unending support and devotion.  What’s odd is that the Premier linked his own decision with one of the singularly worst decisions taken by any administration in recent times, bar none.

This speech and all its implications might wind up having some not so pleasant consequences.

Meanwhile, for those who are interested in the Sprung fiasco, just scan down the right side and check out the series of posts linked there on Great Gambols with Public Money.  If that doesn’t work, just type that phrase into the search box up there on the top right.

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Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 4

Cuke caper: Greenhouse fiasco rocks Newfoundland

The Ottawa Citizen, Sunday January 15, 1989

by: Michael Harris

Brian Peckford is Canada's first lame-cuke premier.

Peckford's Newfoundland government invested more than $18 million of  public  money into a futuristic cucumber operation. Three weeks ago, he announced that the province's adventure in high-tech farming had been laid low. The entire crop in its gigantic hydroponic greenhouse complex had mysteriously died.

Hydroponics is a process that grows plants without soil. The eight-acre complex into which Peckford poured Newfoundlanders' money was supposed to give them cheap, fresh vegetables year-round and create jobs and a profitable export market. So far, the province has got much bigger bills than it counted on, thousands of malnourished and deformed cucumbers, the prospect of an agricultural white elephant and loads of embarrassment.

The premier hinted darkly at foul play when he announced the crop failure. Hours later, the province's partner in the venture, Calgary businessman Philip Sprung, called in the RCMP. Claiming his project had been sabotaged, Sprung released a wild west-style Wanted Poster. He offered a $10,000 reward for the ''capture'' of a shadowy figure who was quickly dubbed ''The Cucumber Killer.''

Sprung brought in Richard Bonanno, an American horticultural academic who concluded in less than a day that sabotage was the likely cause of the crop failure. According to Bonanno, an associate professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in weeds, a triazine commonly known as Velpar was the culprit that triggered the total shutdown of the giant greenhouse complex.

''Dick Banana'' quickly became the darling of talk show callers as the Sprung controversy boiled over. Bonanno's speedy assessment was at first challenged and then dismissed by other experts. Scientists from Memorial University in St. John's said Velpar didn't have the ability to bring about the massive zinc shortages they found in leaf samples taken from cucumber plants in the Sprung greenhouse.

Last week, National Research Council scientists in Halifax flatly eliminated triazines such as Velpar as the cause of the massive crop failure. In ruling out Velpar, Roger Foxall, director of the NRC's Atlantic Laboratory, said that scientists may never know what caused the cucumbers to die on the vine.

Less than a week after the massive crop failure, Peckford gave the floundering project another $1,335,000 to tide Sprung over until a new crop could be planted. The money was immediately spent to cover Sprung's operating costs, leaving the province with the unpleasant prospect of forking over at least $2 million more to the greenhouse before the end of January. Faces around the premier's cabinet were turning as red as Sprung's bottom line.

Informed sources told the press that provincial finance minister Neil Windsor and others had argued in cabinet to close the project. Last Monday minister of agriculture Charlie Power, the man who for the last year has been line minister responsible for the high-tech greenhouse, resigned after 10 years in cabinet.

Power said he lacked ministerial authority to deal with the ''financial fiasco'' of the project. He said he had been treated like ''a Soviet spy'' by Philip Sprung whenever he tried to get information from the government's partner about what was going on at the greenhouse. Power said that the last straw for him was that even though nothing was growing at the greenhouse, the lights had been left on to melt snow off the roof.

''The average daily light bill for December was over $7,000,'' Power said. ''That is a rather expensive way to melt snow.''

When asked if he thought Sprung's sabotage theory was a red herring, the ex-minister offered a barnyard metaphor: ''There is a better description for it. It comes out of a certain end of an agricultural animal.''

Power's criticisms also touched the premier.

''For me to make statements to the press and then realize that the premier's office is fully aware of an entirely different set of circumstances has been both embarrassing and frustrating.''

He added: ''When I look back over the process, I really wonder how a government which recognized our history of Newfoundland getting taken by people from the outside... how we could have got ourselves into it.''

Power complained that he never once presented a cabinet paper on Sprung, that he was misinformed about the financial requirements of the project by the premier's office and that Finance Minister Windsor signed all the loan guarantees on behalf of the province.

''To be briefed after the fact is not, at least in my estimation, the way that the cabinet process or a minister's responsibilities should be done,'' he told reporters after his resignation.

Peckford called Power's resignation ''discourteous and painful.'' He accused his long-time cabinet minister of angling for the leadership of the PC party  - Peckford's job, but hotly rumored to soon be up for grabs. But Peckford has vowed that he intends to lead the party into the next election, so his accusation against Power was puzzling. [Peckford resigned in early 1989, shortly after this article appeared. ]

Power's resignation and the shut-down of the cucumber facility are the most dramatic setbacks in a continuing saga of woe. The Sprung project has been controversial since it was unveiled in May 1987.

Peckford announced that the province was going to be equal partners with Sprung in an $18.4-million hydroponic complex to be built on 25 acres owned by the province. Anxious to make Newfoundland the cucumber capital of North America, Peckford put the public's money where his mouth was and purchased Sprung's used hydroponic structure.

The province threw in a $1-million piece of land, a $7-million loan guarantee, $900,000 in sales tax exemptions and $2.5 million in cash up front. And if the project failed, the government would pick up the tab, while Sprung could walk away for $1.

Peckford said Sprung's revolutionary system would be a money-maker within a year. It was to catapult Newfoundland to the forefront of hydroponics. It was also supposed to provide year-round fresh vegetables at low prices to Newfoundlanders, long used to a limited selection of high-priced imports most of the year.

When the project ran into a seemingly endless string of troubles, the government coughed up $6 million more. Sprung continued to contribute his expertise rather than his money. So far, not a penny of the government's investment in Sprung has been spent with the approval of the legislature. (Total costs for the greenhouse have since ballooned to $25 million, $18 million of which has been picked up by the government.)

Philip Sprung had claimed from the start that he could grow seven million pounds of produce a year at the greenhouse while creating 150 full-time jobs. Other growers scoffed at his claims. Critics called the project ''Grow By Chance,'' a not-so-comic reference to Newfoundland's biggest bankruptcy - the Come By Chance oil refinery.  [Actually Canada’s biggest – ed.]

Oblivious to his critics, Sprung just kept on making claims for his hydroponic system.

''There really isn't anything we can't grow, from marijuana and hashish,'' he once joked to reporters. ''Actually we've never tried, but I'm sure we could do it.''

Sprung was less anxious to talk about the $18-million loss he ran up with the same hydroponic facility in Calgary, where he never produced the quantity of vegetables he claimed he could. When his plants began to die after nearly a year of operation in Calgary, Sprung cited gas emissions from the site of a defunct oil refinery as the cause and sued Imperial Oil and the city for $50 million.

Not long after Peckford's bubbly announcement, the troubles that dogged Sprung in Alberta began to show up in Newfoundland. Five days after the deal with the province was signed, Sprung had a dispute with the project's chief technical director of hydroponics, British Girocrop Ltd.

Girocrop's managing director, Michael Anselm, was replaced by Phil Sprung's daughter, Dawn.

Anselm said one reason he left was that Phil Sprung was more interested in selling hydroponic greenhouses than in the commercial production of vegetables. Dawn Sprung responded that Girocrop's technology had become ''antiquated.'' The irony was withering.

On the day the project was announced, Peckford described the same technology as being on ''the leading edge of a new and highly innovative technology.''

Vexed by questions about the failure of the project in Calgary, Peckford blew up at reporters during a 1987 press conference. He urged them to check out the facts about hydroponics before they criticized the greenhouse. He directed the media to a variety of sources he said would confirm his contention that Sprung's technology was proven and viable and that his deal was a good one.

But a canvass of the premier's sources cast further doubt on the controversial project. John Wiebe of the Alberta Department of Agriculture's Plant Industries Division, told the St. John's Sunday Express that he simply didn't believe Sprung's yield-claims were achievable and that they had never been independently verified.

''It's possible that Mr. Sprung is trying to sell units, not grow crops. There's a lot of hype attached to that operation... I ask people who are potential investors to personally and directly audit the yields. Don't take his word.''

Wiebe's reservations were echoed by Mirza Mohyduddin, a specialist in greenhouse crops with the Alberta government's Tree Nursery and Horticultural Centre.

''Genes are involved. Plants have a genetic limit and you cannot push a plant beyond its genetic limit,'' he said, pointing out that Sprung's yield claims in sunlight-starved Newfoundland were two times greater than growing results in Saudia Arabia, where there is 12 hours of sunlight year-round.

When questioned about the reservations of nearly two dozen scientists, government representatives, growers and marketing people, Peckford insisted that the province had documented proof that Sprung's yield claims were achievable and that markets were in place to make the project economically viable. The premier promised to make the studies public once the legal agreement between the government of Newfoundland and Sprung was executed. He later changed his mind, telling reporters that the information would give other cucumber producers a competitive advantage.

In fact, the only government study of the Sprung operation was carried out by a team of Newfoundland public servants, which visited the Calgary operation in January 1987.

The officials reported to government that Sprung could achieve a top yield of 2.7 million pounds of produce a year, less than half of what he was claiming. They expressed doubt that the marketplace would be willing to pay the $1.08 a pound that Sprung expected to get. The Sunday Express's [sic] freedom of information request for the report was denied, but the paper later published a leaked copy.

Faced with mounting criticism, Peckford put a news blackout on the greenhouse project in May 1988.

''We decided that we will make no further comment on day-to-day operational and marketing decisions of the greenhouse.''

But the bad news kept coming. Although Newfoundlanders had been promised cheaper vegetables from Sprung, it was revealed in June 1988 that local wholesalers were paying 75 cents for the same pound of  produce that was being sold in Boston for just 25 cents.

Public anger deepened when the greenhouse began giving truckloads of deformed and unmarketable cucumbers to local farmers as feed. The government arranged to have Prince Edward visit the greenhouse last June, hoping for some good publicity. Sprung billed the government $10,000 for the cost of white nylon jumpsuits and sneakers for the prince and his entourage.

Then came the accusation from other growers that Sprung was the greenhouse that stole Christmas: the perpetually-lit facility was ruining their poinsettias. The traditional Christmas flowers need a certain amount of darkness to develop their distinctive red coloring.

The Sprung complex's bright lights not only affected plant growth in neighboring areas, residents complained they could play cards or read in their yards at midnight.

Faced with a call from the political opposition for a judicial inquiry into the Sprung fiasco and demands for even more funding from the troubled facility on the short term, Peckford's 10-year-hold on Newfoundland politics has come down to a single decision: should he pour more public money into Sprung or close it and take the heat for a mega-blunder.

It's a problem that won't go away.

This is a white elephant that glows.

-srbp-

Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes

Ah, how quickly they forget, these pleasant but heavily indebted, taxpaying people of Newfoundland and the sorry experience of governments that gamble (or is it gambol?) with public money on all manner of ventures.

How quickly they forget just how they got to be the most indebted people in the entire country.

More than anything else, they got into hock up to their eyeballs from cheering government after government as it poured thei tax dollars into this hole and that, each of which was supposed to gush barrels of cash so that God's Other Chosen (But Seemingly Forgotten) People could at last have their Eden here on Earth.

How quickly do they forget?

Apparently 20 years ago is too long for some of the poor darlings.
From the Memory Hole, the first newspaper cutting about that gloriously foolish venture known as the Sprung Greenhouse.

Bear in mind though that at the time there were a great many supporters of the regime du jour who cried that any amount (in this case upwards of $22 million) was fitting.

"Spend a buck to make a buck" they cried. 

"Brian can gamble with my money any day" they shouted. 

"How can anyone be so negative all the time and oppose this idea?"

"Sure they'll create a few jobs and get it all back in taxes."

"We will be the world leader in cucumber production."

At the end, all the pod-houses did was induce an epidemic of insomnia among the good residents of Mount Pearl and add another $22 million to the public debt.

"Skepticism rains over hydroponic greenhouse"
The Toronto Star
Friday, May 22 1987

by Alan Story

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. - In a province with a mere 380 farms and the poorest soil, a raging agricultural debate has been at the centre of politics - and over-the-back-fence conversations - here for the past two weeks.

The subject: hydroponic cucumbers.

With the active encouragement and financial assistance of the Peckford government, an Alberta firm is dismantling its 3.2-hectare, high-tech greenhouse in Calgary and shipping it east to St. John's to begin growing hydroponically produced cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables.

The $18.5 million joint venture between the Sprung Group of Companies and the Newfoundland government is being touted as a solution to several of Newfoundland's problems.

Among them:

• The lack of cheap, high-quality produce available locally. Neither the price nor taste of a tomato or a cantaloupe you buy at a St. John's supermarket matches what you can find at Toronto's Kensington Market.
• The lack of jobs. According to company president Phil Sprung of Calgary and the government, which will put up to $11.5 million into the project, 330 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs will be created.

Even if all Newfoundlanders became vegetarians, the Sprung greenhouse would produce far more tomatoes and cukes than the local market could ever consume. Sprung's surplus would shipped to the mainland.

"For once, Newfoundland will be first in new technology and not just in unemployment rates," Peckford said on May 8 when he announced the deal. It's not only skeptical mainlanders who are questioning the wisdom of setting up a giant food factory based on technology that failed to perform properly in Calgary and on market studies the premier won't release.

Peckford's mad hunt for employment has brought him "full circle to the insanity that premier (Joey) Smallwood pursed when he tried to set up a chocolate factory, a rubber factory and orange juice factories in the middle '50s," declared Newfoundland New Democratic Party Leader Peter Fenwick.

Worried about the Sprung greenhouse's potential surplus entering markets in the Maritimes and even Ontario, James Keizer, president of the Greenhouse Growers' Association of Nova Scotia told Peckford that "if this greenhouse is built and operated as Sprung claims, it will fail within two years and take some Maritime growers who have built their business - one stick at a time over many years - with them." Letter-to-the-editor writers and editorial cartoonists have had a field day too.

Last week's Sunday Express, a new and brightly written St. John's weekly newspaper, featured a cartoon of a moronic-looking Peckford, clenching a stem of grass between his teeth and overseeing a Rube Goldberg-like operation known as "Peckford's Pickle Farm."

The main serious questions being raised are whether a major hydroponic greenhouse is technically feasible in Newfoundland - hardly Canada's banana belt - and whether it makes economic sense. Hydroponics - growth with water, instead of soil, as a medium - is recognized as a viable method of producing vegetables which is just starting to come into its own across the North America..

Sprung's somewhat secret hydroponic process involves planting seedlings in trays of water containing various nutrients, but no pesticides, and rapidly raising them to maturity under natural or artificial light in greehouses. Sprung makes big claims about the level of productivity. At his former Calgary greenhouses, he says 28,000 tomatoes and 22,000 cucumbers were produced daily. The cukes matured in less than a week.

But can his process work in often foggy and cloudy Newfoundland? Agricultural scientists have pointed that in St. John's, the number of degree days (a measure of natural heat available) is 1,600 while southern Alberta has 3,100 days. The extra heating required and the extensive use of artificial lights proposed for the St. John's greenhouse may significantly boost the costs of production, they warn.

Others following the great greenhouse debate aren't sure what to make of Sprung's claim that gas leaks from the soil at his Calgary site were the only reason why he had a major crop failure last year and why his tomato plants turned grey.

 The economics of the project are also in doubt. Some here are surprised that Peckford, who has tended to avoid getting sucked in by the industrial dream-peddlers who regularily come calling in Atlantic Canada, has become the project's biggest promoter.

Will all of the tomatoes and cucumber grown - more than twice Newfoundland's entire current level of consumption - actually be sold?

Why is the project so large after a recent provincial royal commission specifically warned against the dangers of getting tied into mega-projects?

What will be gained if other Maritime greenhouse producers are put out of business by the government-financed Sprung operation?

Before the Sprung story is over, Peckford may realize that tomatoes can be thrown as well as grown.

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