e-Newsletter – August 15, 2011

Your input is needed – before August 31
As part of the Township of Muskoka Lakes gathering public input on the proposed project to build a hydro-electric generating station at the Bala Falls, several months ago questions were solicited from the public and as a result the Township forwarded a total of 156 questions to the proponent. The proponent has recently provided responses.

Our fight to Save The Bala Falls is a team effort, and now is one of those times when we need everyone to respond, as the Township is now requesting the public’s input on whether you feel these questions have been adequately answered.

We need everybody to:

1. Look through the questions and proponent’s responses here.
   • Note that many of their responses reference letters which are here (that is, rather than providing new information, they just redirect us to their previous responses – which we already know do not answer our questions).
   • We have carefully reviewed all the proponent’s responses and have not found any new information. That is, for too many important issues, the proponent continues to not answer the questions asked – and in fact makes many incorrect statements.
   • Our letter to the Township is here.
2. Note that the Township asks “Have the 156 questions to SREL been adequately answered?”
3. Respond by sending an e-mail to the Township at SRELquestions@muskokalakes.ca
   • If you can, provide one or two examples of how the proponent’s responses do not answer the questions.
   • But, the most important thing is to send an e-mail.

Our article with more detail is here.

We need to ensure visitors know about the proposed project
This remains an important time in the process to Save The Bala Falls.

• Show your support so that visitors to the area know about the issue – get your lawn signs (or car window decal) at Gidley’s Real Estate or Purk’s Place.
• National Geographic magazine has listed Muskoka as the world-wide top best summer trip of 2011, we need to fight to protect our treasure, the area’s beauty and economy depends on it. People won’t come to see where the falls used to be. This proposed project would make over 500′ of the only publically-accessible shoreline in the area too dangerous for the public. Fishing, portaging, and swimming would not be as safe. We still don’t know what the thing would look like. We still don’t know if there would be barbed-wire fencing and sirens sounding daily throughout the summer. The Ministry of Natural Resources is already going to install fences along the shoreline upstream of both the north and south dams. This is a real and present danger.
• If anyone has questions, please have them contact us at info@SaveTheBalaFalls.com

Would it be safe, would it be beautiful, and would there be adequate Scenic Flow
Some people not familiar with the many issues may see our Stop the Hydro Plant signs and wonder why we don’t want a hydro-electric generating station. A brief answer is that as noted here, the proponent has not been able to show the following:

1. The project would be be safe
   • Transport Canada says yes, but their mandate and expertise is marine navigation, not in‐water recreation such as swimming and diving
2. The project would be beautiful, having a positive impact
   • All we’ve seen is an ugly concrete cube with blasted rocks piled up the side
   • Even this information is wrong as it does not allow for cooling, and the view down river from public lookout is obstructed
3. There would be enough scenic flow
   • The falls are crucial to Bala’s economy
   • The proponent’s flow distribution committee was not permitted to finish its work, there has been no agreement on the scenic flow needed

Update
The current status is that the Minister of the Environment is still reviewing our many requests that this project require an individual environmental assessment. Some of you have received this letter from the Ministry of the Environment.

An overall summary of the process is here.

One of our major recent concerns is the surprise announcement from the Ministry of the Environment that the proposed project would use a cycling operation, we have detailed the shamefully late and inadequate response from the proponent here.

Twitter
We have been using Twitter to present our concerns, you can see our postings here.

The proponent has also been using Twitter. As you can see from their postings, they only answer what they choose to, not what the public asks.

Our many recent updates to SaveTheBalaFalls.com are under “Recent Articles”.

Self sign-up
Please encourage other members of your family to sign themselves up for our e-Newsletters, using the Subscribe link at the top-right at SaveTheBalaFalls.com. And for any questions, contact us at info@SaveTheBalaFalls.com. If you need to change the e-mail address to which we send these e-Newsletters, use the link below.

SaveTheBalaFalls.com