Governing by polls: fracking version #nlpoli

There’s something wonderfully cute about the blind, unquestioning boosterism you get from some of the more aggressive groups of young political party supporters.

All parties have them:  the L’il Liberals, the Dinky Dippers, and the Tiny Tories. 

With the provincial Conservatives so low in the polls, the ones among Kathy’s Kittens that desperately want jobs on the Hill as political staffers have taken to tweeting more aggressively than Paul Lane updating the universe on where he ate his latest free meal.

No comment is too Tony-Ducey inane for them to make or – as it turns out – more honest than the Big Connies would like.

An Unwavering Commitment to Inaction, Indecision, and Extra Pork #nlpoli

In 2010, the provincial government appointed Captain Mark Turner to look at the “province’s offshore oil spill prevention and response capabilities.”

He produced the 273 page report and the provincial government dutifully released it along with a lovely news release.

Then-natural resources minister Shawn Skinner committed that the provincial government  would “study the report, and consult with the responsible stakeholders to ensure all recommendations are considered.”

When the rubber meets the paper mill

The provincial government ships used car and truck tires to Quebec where they are burned.

Operators at the province’s last remaining paper mill is considering using tires as a source of fuel in its operations.

Here are two points to consider right off the top, taken from the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s web page on tire-derived fuels.

First of all, burning isn’t the optimum. It’s the fourth use of out a list of five:

EPA supports the highest and best practical use of scrap tires in accordance with the waste management hierarchy, in order of preference: reduce, reuse, recycle, waste-to-energy, and disposal in an appropriate facility.

Second of all, paper mills require tires that have a large amount of processing before they are used as fuel:

The main problem in using TDF in the paper industry is the need to use de-wired tires. The wires often clog the feed systems. Also, the mills sometimes sell the resulting ash to farmers who require the ash to be free of iron. De-wired TDF can cost up to 50 % more than regular TDF.

Let the discussion being.

- srbp -

 

 

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Throw money at it: provgov to study garbage

Sometimes it seems as if Gus Portokalos’ brother wound up running the Newfoundland and Labrador government.

While Gus wanted to put window cleaner on everything, Gus’ imaginary brother in the provincial government likes to throw money at it.

The most recent example is a fund set up with a research centre at Memorial University. There is now $300,000 available to probe garbage.

Apparently, there are “unique waste diversion challenges” in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

So now the fine folks at the province’s university can get up to $15,000 to study ways of “reducing the amount of waste created, reusing materials and products, recycling or reprocessing waste, recovering some useful benefit from waste, and disposing of waste that has no further economic or environmental benefit.”

Ummm.

Right.

And these sorts of thing, the sorts of thing they’ve been doing everywhere else for decades, are not only unknown to people in Newfoundland and Labrador but we must fund university-level research to crack the garbage code that apparently bedevils us.

Once the researchers produce answers to the refuse puzzle, the second pillar of the anti-trash strategy will cut in:  they will tell people about it. And maybe, once they’ve told people about it, those people might come up with suggestions to – in the words of the guy running the research centre -  “shape research questions, leading to new ideas which then encourage further research to achieve implementation.”

So they’ll think about something.  Then they’ll tell people what they thought about.  And then the people they told will come up with new things to think about.  So the people doing the thinking will go back and think some more about the stuff they’ve been told to think about.

And maybe at some point, after all this thinking and talking and thinking and talking, someone might be able to do something with the garbage.

The technical term for this approach is GIGO:  garbage in, garbage out.

People unused to the refined language of the government and the university will only look at the complete lack of action on waste reduction since 2003  and think “circle jerk”.

And they will be right.

This is the administration, after all,  that is now renowned for its inability to do stuff.

This is the administration that took almost four years to take the waste management strategy of their predecessors, photocopy it, move all the target dates back a decade and then announce it as their own, brand-new strategy.

Just in time for an election.

And now three years after that announcement, they toss money at a bunch of people to supposedly figure out what to do with garbage.

This is the same administration that gave a consultant some unspecified hunk of public money to spend 18 months studying ways of keeping young people in the province. The result of the cogitation was truly Earth-shattering in its inventiveness:

1.  Create jobs.

2.  Put services in major centres. Like maybe St. John’s, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor and Corner Brook?

3.  Link education to the labour market.

4.  Build “an understanding of the benefits of immigration and diversity through public education, community dialogue and strengthened curriculums in the education system.”

Well, d’uh.

And it even came with a spelling mistake in the bit that talks about education.

Brilliant!

There is no way that anyone could possibly invent this policy.  It is, after all, nothing more than a hideous self-parody of an administration that is obviously lacking any sense of direction.

Reductio ad argentum, indeed.

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Williams, Dexter ink secret energy deal …but with whom?

A service contract between a public authority and a private sector concessionaire, where the public authority pays the concessionaire to deliver infrastructure and related services, Typically, the concessionaire, who builds the infrastructure asset, is financially responsible for its condition and performance throughout the asset lifetime, or the duration of the agreement.

P3 Canada Fund definition of public-private partnership

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams and Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter have apparently signed a deal to build underwater electricity transmission between the two provinces in partnership with a private sector company or companies.

Williams revealed the agreement when he launched into yet another tirade against the province of Quebec during a hastily-called news conference in St. John’s last week.

Williams said that the two provinces applied for federal funds in late June under the federal government’s public-private partnerships infrastructure funding agreement.

But that’s all he said about the secret deal.

Six weeks after the provinces reached an agreement, the people of both provinces still don’t know when the deal was signed, the conditions of the agreement, how much taxpayers will be on the hook for or the proposed financial arrangements with the private sector company or companies the two governments are or will be partnering with.

In his scrum, Williams very obviously avoided giving a simple, direct answer to a question on costs. He said only that the project cost would be billions depending on which combination of dams and transmission routes NALCOR built.

The cost of the project is currently estimated at more than $14 billion, including an interconnection to the United States. A study completed for the Nova Scotia government earlier this year  - reported by the Chronicle Herald but no longer on line - put the cost of the interconnections between $800 million and $1.2 billion.

Williams also made the false statement in his scrum that the decision of the Regie de l’energie – presumably meaning the May decision – had blocked NALCOR transmission through Quebec.

Meanwhile, though, the public doesn’t even know the name of the company or companies involved in the new secret deal on an intertie to Nova Scotia.

And obviously, there has to be a private sector partner or partners involved even if the two provincial governments haven’t said anything about that aspect of the deal.

The federal government established the $1.2 billion P3 Canada Fund in 2007 to “develop the Canadian market for public-private partnerships for the supply of public infrastructure in the public interest.” The fund will supply qualifying projects with a maximum of 25% of the projects qualifying direct construction costs. 

Typically, public-private partnerships include private involvement in everything from design to the long-term operation of public infrastructure. As the fund’s annual report puts it,

[t]he P3 procurement model is unique in that the private sector assumes a major share of the responsibility for the delivery and the performance of the infrastructure – from designing the concept, architectural and structural planning to its long-term maintenance.

The public sector gets needed infrastructure at reduced risk and cost.  Among the examples cite din the annual is the Confederation Bridge between PEI and New Brunswick.

In order to qualify for assistance under the fund, the private sector partner must have a substantive, continuing role in the project.  It must design or build the project and finance or maintain and operate it. [Round Two application, s. 5.2] 

In a P3 project, the private sector partner would also typically share in the profits of a long-term project as well as adopt risk. In some scenarios, as the application appendices suggest, the project may offer potential spin-off money-making opportunities for the private sector partner separate from the core public interest in the project.

Infrastructure assets developed by public authorities are rarely used to generate additional revenue. In some instances, private sector providers are motivated to develop opportunities for revenue beyond the public authority payment stream and this could be used to reduce the cost to the public authority.

Applicants must submit a business plan for the project between September 2010 and March 2011.

While Danny Williams mentioned a connection between the secret deal and the Lower Churchill, the Nova Scotia intertie is a separate project.  

It’s also bizarre that Williams mentioned possible shipment of power from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Demand projections used in the Lower Churchill environmental review show that demand on the island isn’t strong enough to support development of the Lower Churchill, let alone warrant importing power from Nova Scotia.

And if the intertie carried Lower Churchill power, there’d be no need to send Nova Scotia power into Newfoundland and Labrador.

A connection to Nov Scotia without the Lower Churchill would facilitate the development of untapped alternate energy potential on the island of Newfoundland.

To do that, though, the provincial government would have to abandon the 2007 energy plan and Williams’ obsession with the Lower Churchill.

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Williams admits taxpayers stuck with bill for his expropriation mess

While his embattled environment minister blustered and stuck to the old line during Question Period, outside the legislature Premier Danny Williams admitted to reporters today that the taxpayers of the province will be stuck paying for the environmental cleanup from his expropriation mess.

CBC.ca/nl has a version of the story that’s worth checking out.

The cost of the clean-up, legal fees, any NAFTA penalties for the expropriation and the cost of compensation for seized assets belonging to three companies could reach $500 million or more based on the provincial government’s own estimates.

More to follow.

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Arrogance never impresses

Mr. Speaker, that is the difficulties with letting people see these reports when they do not have the technical expertise to be able to interpret the results.

That’s environment minister Charlene Johnson under fire in the House of Assembly for sitting on environmental assessments of sites related to Abitibi’s operations in the province.

The video  - via CBC - is even less impressive.

At this point in the questioning, Johnson was clearly having difficulty justifying her actions in keeping the reports from the public. What else to do then but to blame the ignorance of everyone else for her decisions.

Yes, folks, the public are too stupid to understand these things so everyone must trust Charlene to do the right thing.

And if there was a problem, she’d tell us.

Sure.

Just like she and her cabinet colleagues told us they’d expropriated the Abitibi mill, arguable the worst environmental mess of the lot, and they did it completely by accident.

Really, though, that’s just the least of Johnson’s problems in the credibility department.  Take a gander at the environmental assessment for the mill that Johnson released yesterday but only because the same documents were posted to a Quebec court website as part of the ongoing legal wrangles since the expropriation Fubar Follies started last year.

They don’t look pretty.  And given that Johnson tried her damnedest to keep them from being public until forced to do so as a result of a related court action, she also looks like she was trying to hide them for some reason other than the stupidity of the average Newfoundlander.

Her other comments in the legislature surely won’t help.

Take for example, her reference to Buchans where she and her cabinet colleagues acted swiftly to alert the public to potential health issues:

When we had these reports done, Mr. Speaker, if there was anything that was identified as an immediate human health and safety issue we acted immediately. Look at the case in Buchans, Mr. Speaker. [Emphasis added]

Immediate.

The word stands out against the backdrop of Johnson’s other words.

Immediate.

As in, something that can’t be avoided, postponed or delayed.

But otherwise?  Not a peep, if you take the full implication of Johnson’s words.

Trust her.

People might be willing to trust her unquestioningly if only we weren’t talking about hazardous chemicals and other products. They might be willing to give her the blind obedience of a Chris Crocker Brigade member if only Johnson hadn’t tried to keep everything under wraps.

And maybe they might be able to look past even that if  she didn’t try to fall back on a mishmash of pseudo-technical gibberish that perhaps even Johnson doesn’t fully comprehend:

Just to break it down so you can put it into laymen’s terms, there was one single arsenic excedence that was taken between a half a metre and a metre below the soil in the ball field. The excedence was twenty-five milligrams per kilogram. If you compare that to the risk-based number that was done for Buchans on the surface, that was forty-eight milligrams per kilogram.

Here’s how the government environmental analysts described the results of earlier testing on the ball field.  Incidentally, they didn’t do any test work of their own:

A previous investigation completed by JW included the collection of two soil samples from test pits, one borehole soil sample, and six surficial soil samples in the area of the present Ball Fields. The soil samples contained BTEX, TPH, and metals at concentrations
greater than the applicable criteria.

Let’s put that into plainer English:  In a total of nine samples – not one but nine – there were of petroleum, oil and lubricants spillage and metals residue at levels above those allowed by the environmental guidelines.

It doesn’t sound nearly as innocuous when you put it real layman’s terms.  Maybe that’s why Johnson avoided plain English.

Johnson and her colleagues have a huge political problem.  Arrogance – the standard defensive tactic of the current administration – doesn’t make things better.

At some point people will remember Johnson’s abysmal performance over a raft of bridges the public used regularly and which fell to Johnson’s department to keep track of. Public safety was so important to her department – to borrow Johnson’s own talking point – that her department didn’t inspect the bridges. 

At all.

One disappeared altogether without explanation and no one seemed to know it until a federal government inspection of some of the bridges showed potentially very serious hazards.  That prompted a panicked inspection by Johnson and her department.

Something should tell Charlene that with that sort of track record “trust me” is not going to work for her again.

-srbp-

The Polling Month Issue

Yes, CRA is in the field again.

No, not Conestoga-Rovers and Associates doing more environmental work for Charlene in the battle against the Great Satan of the Moment.

Corporate Research Associates.

While many of you might think something else might wind up being a big issue in public during that time, offshore drilling might well top out whatever you’ve got on your list today.

The Globe’s got it started with questions about Chevron’s planned deep water exploration well offshore Newfoundland.

And @cbcnl Morning Show in St. John’s is adding to the discussion with comments by biologist Bill Montevecchi who had a go at all comers, including the offshore regulatory board.

Let’s see how things shape up.

-srbp-

Imho-humtep Update:  This story is not going to develop any traction whatsoever if the best anyone can do is start quoting implacable offshore drilling foe Ian Doig.  Apparently someone has managed to resurrect Doig for a quote.

If all we get to listen to are people who thought Hibernia was a bust then let’s just quote Wade Locke and be done of it.  Next thing you know we’ll be hearing about aluminum smelters in Labrador again.

The Thick of It: environment minister version

Environment minister Charlene Johnson.

Think Nicola Murray but without the gravitas.

The province’s environment minister might still be wrestling to find a way to deal with a tire recycling program.  Her only solution to the piles of tires thus far has been shipping them to Quebec for burning.

Johnson might be struggling to sort out the waste management strategy she and her cabinet colleagues photocopied in 2007 from their Liberal predecessors’ version from 2002. 

Yes, friends they just pushed back all the implementation dates by a decade.

Charlene and her colleagues may have buggered up the Abitibi expropriation such that the public is on the hook for cleaning up three of five sites needing remediation.

The sustainable development act may be lost under someone’s desk.

But Charlene knows what it is to be a minister responsible for protecting the environment.

Consider her comments about calls for greater protection for woodland caribou, creatures she has under her jurisdiction:

"I know there [are] calls to have no harvesting at all within the core areas and the buffer areas, but then there would be no logging industry," Johnson told CBC News.

So there’ll be $15 million of study. That’s despite the fact that a decade-old study by government scientists showed that logging within nine kilometres of caribou can seriously affect the animal’s behaviour.

And in her latest round, Johnson thought a bottled water ban in provincial government offices was risible.

Yes, gentle readers, she didn’t just give a straightforward answer.  Charlene thought that ridiculing the New Democrat leader was the right way to go:

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I am absolutely shocked. We are dealing with an oil spill in Louisiana. We have all kinds of fishery issues that have been before the House. There are health issues, there are other issues in environment and I am getting asked questions about banning bottled water in government -

It is not to say that we do not take the issue seriously, Mr. Speaker, but I would certainly suggest that there are a lot of other issues, particularly in the environment that we can address.

Mr. Speaker, I just had a scan around government the other day. There are offices where meetings are held in government that there are no sinks. So, what is she proposing that we do not have anything to drink?

At the very least, we should all be thankful.

Thankful, that is, because even if Charlene is confused about what ocean it is that sits offshore (Hint:  it isn’t the Gulf of Mexico), then at the very least, Charlene knows that compared to the crap-load of major policy issues that have been sitting on her desk for years without any serious attention, bottled water in government isn’t actually the most pressing issue.

That is, not the most pressing even if it would be probably the easiest one of that back-log for her to deal with.

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BTDTGTTS Update:  As someone reminded your humble and now increasingly forgetful e-scribbler, Newfoundland and Labrador already had a ministry like Nicola’s with her “fourth sector” initiative.  We still do.

It’s called the minister responsible for Penny Rowe, errr, the volunteer sector, currently run by Dave Denine.  The first minister responsible for liaising with Penny used to rattle on about the fourth sector, which is a term penny used to use all the time.

BOHICA Update:  Meanwhile, the environmentalist minister landed a major gaffe on Tuesday which is likely to do wonders for the ongoing negotiations and legal action over Abitibi.  Things that were TARFU and FUBAR just went to the final stage, BOHICA. 

Charlene, quoted in the Wednesday Telegram which is sadly not online: 

“Our only concern is that the environment be brought back to the state that Abitibi found it in when they came here to use our resources.  We don’t even ask what the cost is.  As long as we’re fine with the way they’re doing it, that cost is really Abitibi’s responsibility.”

Charlene, God love her little socks, likely thinks that the big evil old company got here in 1905. That is the year on those leases which Carlene and the crowd in the House of Assembly voted to tear up a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately, the woman should actually read the backgrounders on the files she has stacked up on her desk. 

If she did, she would know that Abitibi arrived in the province in 1969.

Not 1905.

Two years after the first Summer of Love.

So basically, Charlene just said that it is government policy to restore the only land in the province Abitibi still owns back to the condition in was in 1969.  Would she like the original pollution restored then, in the places where,as the prov gov already acknowledged, the company has cleaned up a bit? Let’s hope not.

So that’s Botwood sorted out back to the year Sesame Street started.

Then there’s Stephenville.

Abitibi didn’t get that land until 1979.

And by that time both the US Air Force and the provincial government had been peeing on it for the better part of three decades.  First there was an air force base and then there was the infamous linerboard mill.  Huge disaster – at least financially – which shut down in 1979 and left both a contaminated site and a gigantic debt load for the taxpayers.

Then Abitibi bought it for a dollar, at the behest of the Peckford administration.  Abitibi, meanwhile, diverted a brand-spanking new Valmet paper making machine from its original destination of Grand Falls and set it up at the old linerboard building. 

Poof:  the long-awaited third mill, made by splitting one of the others in two.

Now since 2005, Abitibi has already levelled the building the linerboard crowd put there.  So strictly speaking, they’ve actually put the site back in the shape it was just after the Americans frigged off - 1967.

That’s even better than Charlene said the government wanted.

And yet Charlene accuses others of not understanding what is going on.

As Ron Stoppable once said, this would be so cool if it wasn’t going to hurt us.

Big Oil has L’il Buddy available for offshore fight #cdnpoli #oilspill

If the oil companies operating offshore don’t like environment minister Jim Prentice’s plans to toughen up environmental and safety rules offshore, they might well be able to count on a very potent ally:  Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams.

As BP told you last May, under section 5.1 of the Hebron fiscal agreement, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is obliged to side with the oil companies in fighting any regulatory change if the industry feels the changes “might adversely affect any Development Project” of the Hebron field.

David Pryce, vice-president of operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum producers is quoted in the Globe cautioning against what the Globe and Mail described as “potentially punitive regulations”:

“Don’t be too quick to respond, and don’t be too restrictive. That’s a concern for the industry,” said David Pryce, vice-president of operations at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary.

“The fact that there is this concern, and there are a lot of people talking about could it happen here, the [concerns] are do we get a response that’s beyond what’s needed here.”

On Monday, Danny Williams told the provincial legislature that offshore production operations here meant that an accident might be less likely to spill oil onshore compared to the incident in the Gulf of Mexico. During Question Period, Williams said:

From our own perspective, as recently as this morning, we have looked at just exactly what the situations are in the North Atlantic. It is a general understanding that because the offshore sites are significantly offshore and well east of the Province that the situation that could arise in Orphan Basin or Jeanne d’Arc or the Flemish Pass is that there is a lower likelihood that oil would actually come ashore in Newfoundland and Labrador. Now, that is not to say that it would not.

As well, we are dealing with a heavy crude oil out there, so from a fishing perspective, there is less likelihood that it would affect the fishery although it would certainly affect the gear. However, having said that, I am not trying to minimize the circumstances under any situation, we will make sure that we monitor this very closely and that we adopt the best practices in the world.

Only the Hebron oil field will produce heavy crude.  The others all produce oil of roughly the same weight relative to water as the oil currently leaking in the Gulf of Mexico (API 34).

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador  - through its wholely owned subsidiary NALCOR - is a direct partner in offshore development with ownership stakes in one of the producing fields and with stakes in two projects under development, including the massive Hebron project.

While Prentice has no direct say in regulating the offshore, he appears to be echoing sentiment in the federal government for strong offshore regulation.

Under the 1985 Atlantic Accord, the Newfoundland Offshore Area is regulated through the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.  The board is a joint venture between the the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Offshore board completes strategic environmental assessment

From a news release issued earlier today:

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) has completed the “Southern Newfoundland Strategic Environmental Assessment”.

The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) was conducted with the assistance of a working group chaired by the C-NLOPB and with members from provincial and federal government departments, non-governmental agencies, the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union and local community organizations. The SEA provides an overview of the physical and biological environment, highlights sensitive areas and describes data gaps for the SEA area.

The Southern Newfoundland Strategic Environmental Assessment final report is available at the offshore board website. 

-srbp-

So where’s the local crew this time?

What was the point of going to Arnold-land, if you didn’t also plan to go to Copenhagen?

After all, New Brunswick is there talking climate change.

Update:  Darrell is on his way to Denmark, too.

Volatile Update:  Charest is going. So is Gord Campbell.

“Steve” Update:  And of course Steve is going carrying an argument backing Alberta that looks suspiciously, conspicuously familiar.

So far, not a peep from the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

-srbp-

A mid-summer night’s gambol

“Love”, as Shakespeare put it, “looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

Of all the political pixie dust in the province, none has clouded the eyes more than the Lower Churchill.  And while many have played the part,  no Lysanders have been more besotted of this megaproject  than our current one.  

T the course of true love also never runs true and in this case, the course has run nowhere near as true as claimed. While Danny Williams had hoped to be rid of his current job and on to other things by now, he is now saying he will be around until the project is done.   But not a fourth term.

Williams said the project will likely be completed before the 2015 election, and he will be done with politics by that time.

"I can guarantee I won't be around for four terms," the premier said.

The new target date is before 2015, much as the old date, except that now the Premier  is proposing to finish two dams and a power line through the UNESCO World Heritage site and on to St. John’s in less than four years.

The power line, though doth wander everywhere.   According to the latest version it will go over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough brier, over park, over pale,  thorough flood, thorough fire, and through some other unnamed provinces to get to market.  Where those markets are remains a mystery.

One major problem with this power line tale is that the project – as laid down in the environmental review documents – is exactly the same one described by an earlier Lysander, namely Brian Tobin.   One line to get the power to Quebec and another down through Gros Morne park – the government’s clearly preferred option – and thence to the townies.

That’s it.

There is no line proposed to run from Newfoundland off to Nova Scotia or anywhere else.

But gentle readers, enough of these jests.

Let us walk through the Premier’s latest musings on the Lower Churchill, as contained in a Telegram story this August Saturday, and wash the pixie dust from your eyes.  One megaproject-love-struck player is enough.

1.  Show me the money or Follow the money:  The fact Williams didn’t talk about money should be a clue this whole thing is a crock.  Of course, the Telly reporter also didn’t ask about it, so Williams managed to skate around what likely could have been a very testy and difficult part of the interview.

Basically, there’s no talk at any point in the entire interview about power purchase agreements and those puppies are the key to raising the $10 billion to build both dams and the transmission lines.

It’s that simple:

No money?

No project.

2.  Timelines.  Done by 2015, which was the plan back when the project would have been sanctioned in 2009.  The timeline before that was first power in 2011 based on project sanction in 2007.

Early last year the whole thing was a dodgy proposition according to Williams.  At this point, the environmental reviews won’t be complete until 2010 or 2011, leaving, supposedly, a mere four years years to get all the work done.

Horse feathers.

The project cannot be sanctioned – that is approved for construction – until it clears the environmental process.  As such, the project that was supposed to be sanctioned in 2009 is effectively two to three years behind schedule.  Even if everything goes according to the current timeline – and there’s no guarantee that won’t change too – the whole thing will not be up and running until some time around 2019 at the very earliest.

Anyone who has followed this project consistently will recognise the timelines in this interview are simply a crock.

3.  And the departure date’s a crock too.  Danny Williams may run in the next election.  Then again he may not.  If Williams stuck to the original timeline, the project would be sanctioned this year and hence he could leave knowing it is on the way. 

The Lower Churchill isn’t the determinant of Danny Williams political career.  Something else is.  Figure that out and you can figure out whether he will go soon or run again in 2011.  You see, Williams has changed his commitment on departure so many times, it’s hard to take seriously his current version:  that he will leave, definitely, in 2015.

4.  NALCO – run from the Premier’s office.

Williams said he meets regularly with officials at Nalcor Energy - the provincial Crown corporation which is overseeing the project - to get updates on the outstanding issues which need to be addressed before the project is sanctioned.

Anyone who thinks Williams isn’t the de facto head of NALCO can take that quote as a slap upside the head.  There are a raft of implications that go with that but they should be fairly obvious for anyone with a clue.

5.  The sanctioning issues:

Some of those outstanding issues for the Lower Churchill include ratification of the New Dawn agreement with the Labrador Innu, an environmental assessment - expected to be complete next year - choosing a transmission route for the power, finding customers for the power and obtaining financing for the project, which could cost $10 billion.

But Williams is confident that all these matters can be resolved and said steady progress is being made towards the project.

"None of these are insurmountable, they all just take time," Williams said.

Well, let’s see.  There’s  money, something Williams didn’t talk about that much at all and that one isn’t insurmountable unless someone plans to stick taxpayers with the full bill.

As well, there’s:

6.   New Dawn or, as it is known around these parts, the Fart Man Accord.   The land claims deal with the Innu was supposed to be over and done with last January.  Right now the vote on the agreement is postponed until…well…never.  There is no date for a ratification vote.

There’s also no sign the federal government has accepted it and they have to be party to any land claims deal with the Innu

7. The environmental process.  Should be pretty much a mechanical exercise except for the Gros Morne bit.  That one is going to be sticky but only because the feds hold the trump card.  If the thing had included a line to the mainland outside the province, it would be subject to a federal environmental review.  As it is the provincial government will sanction its own power line project – what else would they do? -  but they’ll have to come up with something clever to deal with a backlash over Gros Morne.

Could that “something” be the jobs created by poking a few holes in the ground at Parson’s Pond which is just outside the park?

8.  The feds.  Danny Williams has a bunch of federal things that need fixing if his pet project goes anywhere.  At this point, all that is dead in the water, largely due to his own actions over the past couple of years.

He’s linked the project to federal funding but even as recently as this summer Williams ducked a chance to pitch the project directly to federal cabinet ministers.  Was it because Harper showed up?

The feds won’t just pony up cash for this.  Odds are good it would come – if it came at all – in the form of an equity stake.  That’s means the federal government would own shares in the Lower Churchill just as they do in Hibernia.  Is that something Danny Williams is prepared to accept since he is already so peeved that the Hibernia shares exist?

The feds are also not likely to be persuaded by a cheesy blackmail attempt: 

Williams said the Gros Morne route would probably be the cheaper and shorter route, but he said it could be taken off the table if Ottawa would commit to help fund the project.

9.  Not the preferred route…  Through Gros Morne and the park’s UNESCO World Heritage site designation, that is.  Not the “preferred route”.  Nope.  It’s the only route.

NALCO is pushing the line through Gros Morne it’s the only route they have looked at since all they’ve done is just updated plans that have been around since before the park existed.

Notice, of course, that in polling season Danny Williams is suddenly talking all sweet and purty.  The last time the park route came up he insisted he’d drive the line through the park based on numbers he pulled out of his ass on the spot and a totally shameless bit of nonsense about grandma and her heart surgery.

The time before that Williams was all for the route saying those who doubted the route would be persuaded once they saw the “trade-offs”.

10.  The only thing in the interview you can take to the bank. (Don’t buy the “green project” bullshit)

"This is going to happen, it's just a question of when."

The Lower Churchill has been a project in the works since the 1950s or 1960s.  It’s been going to happen for 50 years.  it’s always been a question of when. 

The only thing we can say for certain now besides saying the project will happen at some point is that the “some point’ will not be by 2015.

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Pee in the shower

See?

Told it was a good idea.

From Brazil,  a cute 45 second spot that shows peeing in the shower saves water in the long run.

When small could mean big

As renewNewEngland.com reports, the Maine state legislature recently passed an initiative designed to encourage small, locally-owned green energy generation concepts. The bill was signed into law on June 26.

The new law establishes a six-year pilot program to encourage the development of community-based renewable energy in Maine, defined as a majority locally-owned facility that generates electricity from an eligible renewable resource.  The pilot program has an overall program cap of 50 MW, 10 MW of which is reserved at the outset for projects that have a generating capacity under 100 kW or are located in the service territory of a consumer-owned utility.  To be eligible for the program, renewable energy projects must (1) have a generating capacity of 10 MW or less, (2) secure a resolution of support from their local community (projects with a capacity of less than 100 kW are exempt from this requirement), (3) be connected to the grid, and (4) have an in-service date of September 1, 2009 or later.

This has all the hallmarks of a growing trend south of the border to focus on private sector development of small energy developments.  It’s based on the belief – apparently -  that small is not only less harmful to the environment but that local initiative and local capital can successfully combine to meet a portion of the nation’s energy needs.  The approach is supposed to create jobs and, since it is handled by the private sector and costs are relatively small, stimulate the growth of local businesses.

Compare that to the official philosophy in Newfoundland and Labrador that is touting an energy megaproject that thus far has no customers outside the northeast Avalon peninsula.  Incidentally, even your humble e-scribbler’s sister missed the point that the infeed the provincial government is trying to ram through Gros Morne is designed to bring power to townies, not Yanks. 

There is no plan in public at this point to extend any power lines south of the island of Newfoundland.  There likely won’t be if customers can’t be found for the juice.  Anyone who has read any part of the environmental review documents for the infeed to Soldiers Pond will understand that the thing is justified entirely on a supposed power shortfall on the island within the next decade. 

They plan to meet that supposed need with Lower Churchill power at a cost of $6.0 to $9.0 billion.  As the 2007  energy plan puts it:

This demand is forecast to grow at a fairly steady, moderate pace over the next several years. This would result in a need for new sources of supply on the Island prior to 2015, and later in Labrador.  As a result, we plan to develop the Lower Churchill project, which will include  a transmission link between Labrador and the Island.

Anyone reading the environmental impact documents will also realise that the provincial government’s energy company has effectively ignored the potential for small hydro developments or other small electricity projects to meet local need.  Even when an energy corporation official talks about wind power, it is obvious the corporation is fixated on the export market.  And when they think exports, big is all they seem to see.

There’s been a moratorium on small hydro projects in the province since the late 1990s.  While the provincial government committed two years ago to make a decision on the moratorium this year, odds are the decision won’t be made on time.  Even if it is made, the energy plan links the Lower Churchill and alternative sources for the island in an “either/or” proposition.  If the government proceeds with the Lower Churchill, alternatives are dead issues.  If the Lower Churchill dies, then small generators are the way to go.

As for private sector capital investment,  you only have to consider that one of the effects of the expropriation bill last December to see the official attitude to the private sector.  While everyone fixated on Abitibi, the expropriation also included seizing control of just exactly the kinds of small hydro that Maine and others are encouraging and hand them over to the provincial government’s energy corporation.  Star Lake  - totally unrelated to the Abitibi mill - was one of the casualties of the expropriation, as was the Exploits River partnership, a joint venture between Abitibi and locally-based Fortis. 

If that doesn’t convince you, consider that in the event small hydro projects go ahead, the energy plans mandates that only the provincial government energy corporation will be involved:

If the Provincial Government lifts the moratorium, it will institute a policy that the Energy Corporation will control and coordinate the development of small hydro projects that meet economic thresholds and are viable for an isolated island system.

And it’s not like the energy corporation has been very efficient at exploring alternatives to its current obsession with megaprojects.  The earliest proposals for wind energy farms on the island turned up over a decade ago. However, it took another six years for a small project to start on an isolated island and another  seven years for a report to examine the issues involved in wind generation and another two years after that before the first larger demonstration project started.

If Newfoundland and Labrador followed the approach of other jurisdictions, the people of the province could reaping the big economic and environmental benefits of innovative, small energy generation.

Unfortunately, the provincial government’s energy plan is fixated on government monopoly and megaprojects. The only things big in that are costs and - of course - project delays.

The Lower Churchill was supposed to start in 2009.  By the latest estimates, the earliest it could start construction is after 2011.

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Uncommon tourism potential: A vision of hydro towers in a UNESCO World Heritage site

On Friday, the provincial government announced the creation of a new bureaucracy to promote tourism to the province, as if that was the answer to the dwindling return on investment from the current approach.

You can tell a lot about any plan by the way it proposes to measure success.  In this case, the new tourism strategy – Uncommon potential – wants to double the amount of money generated by tourism in the province.  Inflation would pretty much take care of hefty enough chunk of that in the next 11 years so whatever is left can be either explained away when the time comes or simply ignored.

You can tell this is a serious plan:  it has lots of pretty pictures in it, shop-worn jargon by the shovel-full  - “world-class” and “the possibilities are endless”, two great Chuck Fureyisms from his stint as tourism czar - but no indication of how much money it will cost to do all the things listed as the various action items.

One would have to read the release to appreciate, as well, that the strategy doesn’t really get at one of the current problems, namely the fact that more than half the $500 million generated by “tourism” right at the moment doesn’t come from people travelling into the place.  It comes from locals.

Odd, though, that there is no mention in this beautiful looking document of the tourism potential of high voltage direct current hydro-electric transmissions lines.  There’s lots about pristine wilderness, natural beauty, authentic experiences and a raft of other buzzwords but nothing about giant steel girders supporting buzzing electricity cables.

Odd, you see, because that’s exactly what the provincial government’s energy corporation is planning to string from Labrador down to the Avalon peninsula to meet a demand that can be met with other sources of power.

The energy company plans to run the lines, in one part at least, through Gros Morne National Park.  That would be the UNESCO world heritage site. Now there are already lines in the park that were installed long before the park was established in 1987. 

But you’d think that a company owned by the provincial government might be looking at ways of getting out of the park altogether rather than planning on increasing the power lines in a truly beautiful place.

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Doing nothing to save the national emblem

A woodland caribou population in serious trouble. The overall drop is from over 90,000 animals to just under 40,000 in a little over a decade. Some herds are at a tiny fraction of their numbers a few years ago.

The fairly obvious reason: an increase in predation - especially from invading coyotes which are not native to the island - and other pressures from things like human development. Those reasons , especially the predation one, are acknowledged in the news releases describing government's response:

$15.3 million.

Five years.

To develop a strategy - that can be implemented after the situation is five years further developed - to figure out.

Not we have a strategy or that it will take us a few weeks or months since we have already been studying this, but rather we will now study the problem to confirm there is a problem and then tell you what we will do.

Five years from now.

And that's in addition to two years and $3.7 million to study the decline already.

If the same rate of decline obtains, there will be something like 20,000 or fewer caribou left by the time they finish the study.

At that point the Do Nothings will probably announce a study to determine if the study that was just concluded actually had any impact or if things just kept getting worse on their own.

And according to the news release continuing to study rather than studying and then acting is part of their "strategy".

Strategy for what?

Doing Nothing, evidently.

And it's not like that should be a surprise.

Just remember the throne speech from a few years ago telling us what the Do Nothing philosophy was all about: and there shall be plans and plans for plans and plans to integrate the planning for plans.

De-Hearn-iated news

Canada's adolescent government (it isn't newborn anymore) is taking action to protect the ocean environment.

Lawrence Cannon said so last Friday.

But the announcement doesn't even include a mention of the adolescent's fish minister, Loyola Hearn.

Very unusual, indeed, given that the money will likely mean a great deal to people in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Welcome to Energyville!

Energyville is an online game that illustrates the challenges and complexities of meeting energy needs in a modern society. The game was developed by The Economist Group and hosted at willyoujoinus.com, a site run by Chevron.

UK-based communications consultant Neville Hobson describes the game this way:

The game makes you think about the issues surrounding energy usage, society’s needs, security, effects on the environment… indeed, all the hot issues surrounding the changes happening in our world and the impacts we have on our environment.

Energyville is cleverly conceived and implemented. It has credibility, both in the breadth and depth of content and the fact that The Economist is behind its development.

Where it really scores is in how it wraps all of this up and presents it in a highly entertaining way.

What would be great is if this online game were to be developed as a standalone, downloadable version and made available for a nominal cost if not for free. Then I think there would be real opportunities for enormous awareness-raising.

Anyway, have a go yourself and see if it impacts your thinking about our environment

willyoujoinus.com is a Chevron initiative designed to foster an online discussion about energy and environmental issues. The website is essentially conventional in many respects, although it apes the interactivity and language of Web 2.0 with terms like "post".

As Neville Hobson has pointed out in another post, a blog approach would have provided Chevron with a site that offers personality and authenticity. those are key factors in establishing credibility and credibility is one area where a website on energy and the environment may suffer when run by a major oil company.

As it is, the site includes e-cards, but the bulk of the site - aside from Energyville and the discussion forum are Chevron's standard advertising content supporting the initiative. lovely stuff, that it is, these traditional approaches won't succeed where a more up-to-date approach would likely have succeeded. In an online world where "go big or go home" is more likely get positive results, Chevron stuck with the same-old, same-old.

Still, willyoujoinus.com is a step in the right direction. Energyville in particular has bags of content that will be highly provocative. Having the game designed by The Economist helps significantly with its credibility. Just imagine the impact this site might have had if Chevron employees were able to speak directly about major issues they deal with each day.

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