Nov 042009
As a result of our presentation to District Council on October 26, 2009, the proponent wrote a response letter to the District Chair and many others.
The proponent’s passion comes out in their letter’s extremely strong wording, no doubt because they are working really hard on this. But this is not because they’re doing a good job, it is because they are trying to solve an unsolvable problem – how to fit an industrial facility into a recreational area.
Unfortunately, to follow some of the points gets into technical details, but the details are what matter in this project, and while we had to be brief and diplomatic in our response letter, we can add more detail here. For example:
- In point 4, concerning the current portage route from beside Purk’s Place to the Moon River the proponent states: “Mr. Shnier conveniently overlooked mentioning that portagers currently must cross, and walk some distance along Muskoka Road 169”. We have included a diagram in our response letter that shows that the current portage does not ever walk along the road, it simply crosses it. Furthermore, the proponent whines that we haven’t considered the possible future snowmobile bridge as an option for portagers. This too is shown in our diagram to show that this is of no help to get to the Moon River. Both of these points demonstrate that the proponent does not understand the site (Section 6.3.6.1).
- In point 6, the proponent states: “Mr. Shnier’s accusation that the noise specialists ignored the effects of the turbine, gearbox, generator and transformer cooling fan, is patently false”. If the proponent would read their own environmental screening report carefully, they would see that on pdf page 11 of Appendix C1, Table 3.1 notes that from the transformer, the noise calculations have only included the magnetostrictive noise (this is the ominous humming sound from larger transformers), and not the transformer cooling fan noise – which for a four-million-watt transformer could be significant.