Industry group upset by coal plant rejection
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No extra municipal measure placed on Quinsam Coal
By Grant Warkentin
Campbell River Mirror Staff
May 28, 2004
An industry group believes Quinsam Coal's power plant proposal was rejected because BC Hydro was concerned about public reaction to coal power.
"It is our view that BC Hydro is totally unwilling to consider this low-cost source of power because of their concern about their public approval rating," said Daniel Potts, executive director of the Joint Industry Electricity Steering Committee in a letter to the provincial minister of Energy and Mines and the BC Utilities Commission.
The steering committee is an industry group that represents 48 of BC Hydro's industrial customers. The committee believes Quinsam Coal's proposal to build a 150-megawatt power plant at its mine site was unfairly rejected by BC Hydro.
"It is our understanding that the coal plant was rejected because the proponent was unwilling to guarantee an availability of 97 per cent and further that BC Hydro had concluded the plant could not obtain the necessary environmental permits in time to meet the required in-service date," Potts said. "It would appear, consistent with BC Hydro's demonstrated lack of enthusiasm for coal, that the outcome was predetermined by establishing mandatory criteria regarding availability that no coal plant could meet."
However, BC Hydro treated all power proposals fairly, said Elisha Moreno, spokesperson for BC Hydro.
"All of them had to meet that criteria," she said. "We certainly didn't want to give the impression that we were biased against coal."
Moreno said the requirements for Quinsam Coal weren't any more restrictive than for other proposed power projects. She said Quinsam Coal wasn't selected because it couldn't meet the same requirements as the other proposals.
"One of the reasons why Quinsam didn't make it was because we required dependable capacity by a certain time and the criteria that we set up in the process required them to meet a certain timeline and required them to show us that we were able to rely on their resource, their source of energy," she said. "Obviously because they didn't make it to that next step, they didn't meet that criteria."
David Slater, president and CEO of Quinsam Coal, said earlier this month that he believed BC Hydro was biased against the project.
"Basically the cards were stacked against us from the start," he said. "The reasons that they gave for not qualifying us-they were searching for things to do to not qualify us."
Slater said by requiring the plant to provide power consistently 97 per cent of the time, it made it impossible for the plant to meet the necessary criteria to qualify.
However, Moreno said the 97 per cent availability requirement is not unusual and other power projects were required to meet the same percentage.
No extra municipal measure placed on Quinsam Coal
By Grant Warkentin
Campbell River Mirror Staff
May 28, 2004
Council trusts provincial authorities are doing a good enough job of keeping Quinsam Coal environmentally accountable.
However, that doesn't mean city hall won't keep pressuring the provincial environment ministry to work quickly to find out why pollution levels are increasing in lakes around the mine site.
"I guess my concern is that if you wait, the fish die," said Coun. Charlie Cornfield Tuesday night.
Quinsam Coal representatives at the meeting said they were ready and willing to co-operate and that the mine is already trying to keep to a minimum the effect it has on the environment.
"We're working very diligently at Quinsam Coal to ensure the environment is kept intact," said Paul Krivokuca, mine manager.
The main pollutants coming from the mine site are sulphates, which are a form of sulphuric acid. The Campbell River Environmental Council, a local environmental group, is concerned about the effects the compounds are having on nearby lakes such as Long Lake, especially since 1997, when sulphate levels in lakes around the mine started to increase significantly.
However, despite the group's concerns, council is confident the issue is in competent hands. Quinsam Coal's pollution levels are monitored by the Environmental Technical Review Committee, a group of provincial, federal, municipal and industry representatives who analyze environmental data collected from the lakes and lands around Quinsam Coal's mine site. Based on that data, the committee decides how the mine is doing in terms of its impact on the environment.
And despite some problems, such as an error published in the committee's last report that said sulphate levels in surrounding lakes were decreasing when they were actually increasing, council is confident the committee is doing a good job.
Councillors decided Tuesday night to keep the status quo - the technical review committee will continue to review data collected each year from stations around the mine site.
Council could have opted to hire an independent consultant to review all the data collected so far. The consultant would have cost about $20,000. However, council decided there was no need to spend the extra money. Coun. Bill Matthews, Roy Grant and Cornfield all said the technical review committee is doing a good job and council should be able to rely on the committee's judgment and decisions.
The environmental group would have rather seen council spend money on a third-party consultant. They said in an April report that information provided to the public on the issue in the past was too little, too late and too vague to be useful.
"The author sees the regional waste manager's report to the public this year as fitting the pattern of previous years, of being less than forthright," the environmental group's report says.
Posted by Arthur Caldicott on 30 May 2004