Open letter to AltaLink and AESO

Phil Burpee

Open letter to Scott Thon and David Erickson, Presidents and CEOs of Altalink and Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) respectively:

Chris Davis photo

I remember when Alan Fotheringham used to write a column for Macleans Magazine, he would often use the term ‘obfuscate the muddification’, or just as likely, ‘muddify the obfuscation’, when he came across a particularly obtuse and dunder-headed approach to any complex problem. The idea was that when somebody doesn’t know, or doesn’t wish to reveal, the reasoning behind some wildly-swerving manoeuver or other, they would try to bury the whole sorry mess in bafflegab in hopes of scaring off further investigations or ongoing search for clarity. This would seem to be the case with the whole sordid affair otherwise known as the Southern Alberta Transmission System Reinforcement (SATR) and its Needs Identification Document (NID). How different it might have been.


If this process had been undertaken in a truly open and comprehensively consultative manner right from the start, we might not now be in a position whereby people all the way from North Fork up in the Porcupines down south across the Oldman to the Castle River, and all points in between, are confused, anxious and infuriated. No fewer then a dozen different possible routes have now been proposed for the planned 240kv transmission line which had originally been identified as a necessary link between the Goose Lake substation north of Pincher Creek and the Crowsnest Pass, where it would connect into the 500kv line running to Cranbrook (and subsequently, presumably, on to California). Anybody who’s had a look at these maps understands the term ‘throwing spaghetti at a wall’. It’s a shockingly crude and disruptive way to do business. Altalink, the artist in question here, is otherwise understood to be a highly professional organization, indeed a recently-acquired subsidiary of SNC Lavalin, a trans-national engineering corporation notorious for scuttling out of Libya where it had been building a shiny new prison for Moammar Gaddafi.

In the recent open house put on by Altalink and AESO at Cowley, Altalink’s Mike Horner, Chief of Operations for the SATR, did a very gentlemanly and competent job of defending Altalink’s position before a slightly cantankerous room full of angry stakeholders and landowners. The problem was, and is, that Altalink’s position is by no means entirely defensible for a couple of very fundamental reasons. It’s telling that both Altalink and AESO have been called up on the carpet before the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) this August in a special Preliminary Hearing to explain how their current design and routing plans have deviated so radically from those first put forward three years ago  -  how ‘cat’ has suddenly become ‘dog’. But of greater concern is perhaps the total disregard both of these two organizations have shown for existing mechanisms governing broader land-use issues and the surrounding implications of development. Altalink repeatedly assures us that everything they do will seek to be done so as to exert the ‘least overall impact’. The problem is that the determination of ‘impact’ is left entirely to Altalink themselves, a situation tantamount to letting the fox design the chickenhouse. This business of impact has in fact already been comprehensively and soberingly articulated by Dr. Brad Stelfox in his now state-of-the-science document known as the Southern Foothills Study (SFS). In this study, which was sponsored by, amongst others, the MDs of Ranchlands, Willow Creek and Pincher Creek, the Oldman Watershed Council, Shell Canada, Petro Canada and the Alberta Wilderness Association, Dr. Stelfox uses his computer modeling system known as ‘A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator’ (ALCES) to look at how the Southern Foothills area might look in decades to come if we continue to pursue development in a ‘business-as-usual’ manner, with each industry and stakeholder pursuing their own agenda without recourse to the bigger picture. The results, well remembered by anyone who attended any of the power-point presentations by Dr. Stelfox, are both stunning and disturbing. Mr. Horner confirmed that Altalink had not consulted this study, even though this document has been applauded by both previous Ministers of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD), Dave Coutts and Ted Morton, and Mr. Coutts had in fact instructed his newly-formed Office of Environmental Management to employ the Study as a paradigm for making their determinations concerning land-use matters. Mr. Horner also confirmed that Altalink is not compelled to consult with the Regional Advisory Council (RAC) of the South Saskatchewan Region under the Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA), often referred to as the Land Use Framework (LUF). There is no legislative mechanism in place to force them to do so. So, they define both the rules and the context themselves, in isolation. A poor situation, to say the least.

We are all in a bind here. The wind-electric generation industry is free to develop in an open market as publicly-traded entities. They can raise capital and take risks based on their best understanding of the market’s ability to respond. We applaud their innovation and tenacity in a highly competitive marketplace, while at the same time perhaps being somewhat saddened at the spectacle of ridge after ridge of landscape succumbing to turbines. However, this functionally unregulated industry is, in effect, able to dictate to an otherwise highly-regulated and essentially monopolistic industry  -  the purveyors of high-tension transmission facilities. If John Doe builds a wind farm, the taxpayer of Alberta is on the hook to see to it that he can get his product to market. In this respect it is somewhat akin to highways. But, unlike highways, the public is not guaranteed access. The electricity will go where it is demanded  -  Calgary or L.A. We are left to foot the bill while Altalink is assured a 9% return on a risk-free investment, the collateral for which is the public coffers.

It is wrong that we should be sold a bill of goods that passes for public consultation. We do not inhabit a blank map. Dr. Stelfox warned of just this sort of whitewash. This entire process of needs assessment and system design ought to be backed up and put in proper context. And the entire development needs to be fit into the broader context of all potential land-users, not just for the next couple of years, but for generations to come. Business as usual is no longer an acceptable model.


Phil Burpee
Pincher Creek

Links:
Livingstone Landowners Group
Alberta Utilities Commission
AltaLink
Southern Foothills Study

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