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Friends of the Cawthra Bush & Greater Mississauga Area
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Opening comments: More at the end. Supplies of Natural gas in question? "Any future for natural gas will be short-lived, as it has been for nuclear power. Known reserves of natural gas are waning,". Interesting that they slipped MPP Tim Peterson's picture in this - for some reason. MISSISSAUGA BUSINESS TIMES April 2005 Page-23 (AFTER HOURS) Is natural solution to our power woes? New age, old hat, more dirty power? OPINION - By Rich Letkeman Announcements from the Ontario government are expected this month on expansions to the province's aging power grid. In a long-overdue effort to phase out coalburning and nuclear power generators in favour of cleaner electric power, projects for at least 2,500 and perhaps up to 4,000 MW of private-sector power will come into existence in response to the McGuinty government's request for proposals. Although news releases from Queen's Park have not stipulated it, natural gas will be the norm, and power, companies anxiously awaited the opportunity to fill the need. Residents of many communities are (less anxiously) awaiting word on 33 proposals that were received for a grand total of 8,300 MW of proposed new power capacity. Concurrently with its RFPs for gas plants, the government called for 300 MW of renewal-energy proposals but got a "bumper crop" of 4,000 MW in offers. Three of the gas-power proposals, totalling 1,800 MW of electric power, are for Mississauga but not all of them will be part of the 2,500-MW target. They are: Sithe Energies for a 945-MW plant on Winston Churchill south of Royal Windsor, TransCanada Pipelines for a 550-MW plant in Meadowvale, and Epcor Power for a 300-MW plant on Haines Road north of Queensway, in the Applewood area. Along with the planned, April 30 shutdown of GTA's biggest polluter - the coal-fired Lakeview Generating Station - the decision was made to restart Picketing's Number One reactor to prevent brownouts and guarantee a reliable flow of power in Ontario. " Well, that's just great," says Ontario Clean Air Alliance group (OCAA), "The sad performance of nuclear reactors was what caused a 120 per cent surge in coal power between 1995 and 2003." Ontario's power capacity right now is about 35 per cent nuclear, 25 per cent hydroelectric, 25 per cent coal and 8 per cent natural gas. Two weeks ago, residents of Applewood Acres in Mississauga's Dixie South sector went 500-strong into a public meeting to vent their concerns about the small-to-middling Epcor generating plant proposed for Haines Road. The meeting was attended by Tim Peterson (MPP-Mississauga South), who said residents "were vocal and forceful" in their concerns that the Epcor proposal was moving ahead without enough notice, that pollution would be a major problem, and that their property values would drop by 10 per cent or more. Epcor is a 102-year-old company with $4.3-billion in assets, an old pro at power generation and water treatment in Western Canada. According to the Applewood Acres Homeowners' Association, "The newsletters announcing Epcor's Public Open House were mandated in the government's RFPs, but missing from the doorsteps of many, if not most of the residents within the stipulated radius." Another ground rule for the RFPs was: "No interviews or related contacts with the media", leaving the press rudely barred from news of major importance to the community. Some residents pleaded: "Build the power plants outside of our urban neighbourhoods, because they're not clean." Or are they? "Natural gas is estimated to be 75-90 per cent less polluting than coal," said Peterson. "The pollution factor of new gas plants will be more than offset by the shutdown of Lakeview which, it could be argued, might actually increase property values in Applewood rather than depress them." Lakeview's shutdown may just end a legacy of extensive smog clouds reaching downtown Toronto and across the waters to Rochester and upstate New York, where per-capita consumption is 37 per cent less than in Ontario. Cont. on page 23 Cont. from page 14 Coal's smoke and particulates have done much damage to lungs and OHIP billings in Mississauga and the GTA. But it's not as simple as that. As an adjunct to its stated intentions of developing cleaner energy sources, McGuinty's government announced it would keep certain coal plants on standby just in case. Location matters little, because nearly all, electric power output goes into the massive Ontario grid. The OCAA states that the shutdown should just be a beginning. It recommends reducing Ontario's peak demand by 1,350 MW through a kind of "demand response program", boosting private-sector development from 2,500 to 4,000 MW, converting Lambton Station to natural gas, promoting small-town (10 MW or less) projects, and installing a 16 per cent surplus of clean power capacity in three years. According to the Ontario Medical Association, pollution kills about 2,000 people in (Ontario and costs the province about $10-billion. Lakeview alone spilled 20,000 tonnes of pollutants into the air in 2002- sorry 'bout that. Fraser Institute, calling itself "an independent public policy organization", and enlisting the help of dubious consultants from the U.S. who serve their individual interests, have told our government ministries that pollution is not a problem in this province (hence, no smog), coalburning is not a major contributor (hence, no smog), and we should focus more on adapting to climate changes than on reducing pollution sources. Fraser Institute goes further by saying that air quality is much improved since the 1970s. They probably mean that the Air Quality Index is higher because there was no AQI back then. The Environment ministry now shows a 20 per cent increase in ozone since 1980, and 35 "smog days" in 2004, many of which extended right into country and northern Ontario. Fraser Institute says coal-fired plants play a small pollution role. Hmmm? But we're capable of figuring out that the smog output of our coal plants matches that of 6.2 million automobiles and includes 67 per cent of the province's chromium, 39 per cent of its airborne mercury, 27 per cent of its SO2, 27 per cent of its arsenic, 20 per cent of its CO2 and 14 per cent of its nitrogen oxides. Is that small? The big question being asked, now that Ontario's government appears committed to natural gas without having stated so much, is whether natural gas really is as clean as people say it is. For one thing, their short stacks release their invisible fallout at lower altitudes than coal plants do. Some environmentalists argue that if all three plants are built in Mississauga, total pollution will rival that of Lakeview and Toronto's hapless population will still be downwind of it all. MPP Tim PETERSON [ His picture not included. ] Most observers and groups appear to be on the side of OCAA, an organization that partners with many others for total memberships of nearly six million in Ontario. But how safe is natural gas, the strongest alternative to coal? Many studies have been undertaken by private industry and governments on this continent, but they likely will have no further influence on the Energy and Environment ministries who call the shots. It would seem to most people that our government "knows what it's doing", that if they say hydrogen is too expensive for power generation, then it must be true. In the U.S., numerous natural-gas plants close down on short notice for no other reason than that gas prices are trending upward, then downward while the flexibility of power grids allows them to do so. Is hydrogen really more expensive than, say, the $10-billion public-health liability which CMA says is suffered annually by Ontarians for using coal? If the $10-billion estimate is accurate, each Ontarian is paying a $1,000 financial penalty each year, plus an immeasurable health penalty, for using coal. Many households of two or three individuals don't even spend that much on electricity - which would lead to the conclusion that the estimate is exaggerated. Any future for natural gas will be short-lived, as it has been for nuclear power. Known reserves of natural gas are waning, but the good news is that fuel at the burners can readily be replaced with hydrogen; hang the expense but welcome the clean air. Automobiles should be burning it as well. Associations devoted to allergy and environmental - health issues in Canada have collected a lot of data on the effects of natural gas in kitchens and the atmosphere, and they think it is a monumental concern. A typical first question with respect to natural-gas power plants is whether they're being built underground, sight-unseen. A typical answer is that they can't be, due to the need for cooling-water systems (Can't the cooling water be routed underground?). The probable correct answer is that natural gas is explosive, it's heavier than air, and underground explosions are more destructive than aboveground versions. Natural gas comes with 80 different "particulates", which is the politically friendly way of describing chemicals, compounds, metals, effluents and toxins. In his column in the Mississauga News on January 12th, Dr, Boyd Upper, chair of the Clear The Air Coalition, called for residents in gas-power neighbourhoods to ask the power companies for hard facts about the range and toxic content of fallout. Natural gas may be the worst form of fuel, especially for people who are sensitized or susceptible. It makes secondhand smoke look friendly, according to Geocities in its well-known website. Incomplete combustion of NG results in a lot of CO, NO2,3 and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. Methane is the main component, and its "conventional" toxicity is low but it's an asphyxiant. Some NG contains hydrogen sulfide, very dangerous, which escapes from the gas when refineries remove it, causing respiratory dysfunction in children, cancer, birth defects, infant mortality, lead and mercury contamination, headache and skin conditions. Lung-cancer-causing radon and radium are present in NG, and no one wants these radioactive elements emanating from power plants and gas stoves. Penn State University has found up to 1,250 ppm of PCBs in samples of natural gas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) specifies 0 to 50 ppm as the limit for humans, which would be less for animals, whose habitats would be threatened if the plants were built in rural areas. Beef or milk-giving cattle would have to be moved away from the PCBs and other particulates of gas-fired power plants. In studies reported as early as 40 years ago but never heeded, NG has been linked with many neurobehavioural and physiological conditions such as fatigue, dizziness, depression, and nausea. Allergies or "sensitizations" usually get worse with repeated or even lessening exposure, so long as it's exposure. Resistance mechanisms just keep breaking down. By and large, it's been found that indoor pollution is much worse than outdoor exposure, especially since we happen to spend about 90 per cent of our time indoors. In 1993, CMHC, in one of its homeowners' guides, recommended replacing gas appliances with electric ones. Do we accept natural gas for the next phase, or do we make it hydrogen? The answer, as always, is in the buck. The way of the future may be in high-efficiency, space-age waste-burning plants, built out into harbours, such as the Vision21 project under development in the U.S. but not yet designed or built. These plants theoretically would burn municipal waste, natural gas, biomass, coal, coke or liquid fuels, with zero pollution. The way of the future for power generation, not just in southern Ontario and not just in Canada, must be “clean at any cost." Rick Letkeman is a
longtime City resident and businessman, and a contributor to the
Mississauga Business Times
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