Power plant issue heating up
Two groups bidding for project spark political debates
Liberals vie for new building, NDP wants to keep old one
Mar. 14, 2006. 01:00 AM
JOHN SPEARS
CITY HALL BUREAU
The politics of keeping Toronto's lights on is striking more sparks, with a round of claims and counter-claims between rival candidates in the provincial by-election in Toronto-Danforth.
Two competing groups are duelling for the right to build a new power plant in the Portlands area of the waterfront — a plant that provincial advisers say is needed to avert the risk of blackouts in downtown Toronto as early as 2008.
Now, the two front-running, by-election candidates are fighting over which plant is best — or perhaps which plant is worst — as they head for a March 30 vote.
Liberal candidate Ben Chin has circulated a flyer in parts of the riding branding one proposal — from Toronto Hydro and Constellation Energy — as the "NDP plant."
"That's strange," scoffed New Democratic Party candidate Peter Tabuns in an interview. "The NDP doesn't put bids on power plants."
What Chin describes as "the NDP plant" is a proposal by Toronto Hydro and Baltimore-based Constellation Energy to install up to 582 megawatts of power, in two stages, in the mothballed Richard L. Hearn station. Programs to conserve power and to create an energy "centre of excellence" in the facility are part of the proposal.
Tabuns retorts that Chin is supporting a "mega-plant" or "McGuinty's plant" — that's the Portlands Energy Centre, a 550-megawatt generating station proposed by a partnership of Ontario Power Generation and TransCanada Corp. They say they'll put it in a new building next door to the Hearn.
Chin's latest flyer charges that "the NDP plant is backed by a big American utility company that wants the Hearn site for free."
Toronto Hydro and Constellation say they have an option to assume the lease of a film company that now occupies the Hearn; they say they'd pay $24.5 million in rent over the next 20 years, and then return the plant to OPG. They also estimate they'd spend $10 million upgrading the building.
Tabuns said in an interview he hasn't endorsed or rejected the Toronto Hydro-Constellation bid because "it needs more examination by the community;" but he does reject the rival proposal, which he says neglects conservation options.
The OPG-TransCanada proposal got the endorsement of energy minister Donna Cansfield, who late last month directed the Ontario Power Authority to strike a deal with the proponents. She dismissed the Toronto Hydro bid as inadequate, and said the OPG bid had the best chance of being completed in time.
Toronto Hydro and Constellation have submitted their bid in defiance of Cansfield's directive, but the power authority has said it can't actively consider it.
But Cansfield's decision to make the call on the new plant rather than let the arms-length power authority do the job has made the issue overtly political.
"I'm comfortable with the choice the energy minister made," Chin said yesterday.
Chin said he, too, once favoured using the Hearn building, but as he learned more about technical obstacles "I found myself standing on thinner and thinner ice." |
