Jul 252014
 

The Ministry of Natural Resources’ 2004/2005 Competitive Site Release for the North Bala Dam was for the Crown land south of the Bala north falls (“Proposed site”, below), which has an area of 765 m².

However, the MNR intends to also release to the proponent – in perpetuity – the three other Crown lands sites they own in Bala (click for a larger view).

These other sites have a total area of 3,190 m². So not only does the MNR plan on releasing more than five times the public land they originally disclosed, but most all the public land in Bala become controlled by a private developer.

So if the developer’s operator, or lawyers, or insurance company told them the public could fall climbing the rocks in Margaret Burgess Park or get sucked-into the proposed water intake downstream of the land beside Purk’s Place, the developer could fence off these areas from public access. Or if they felt this didn’t reduce their liability enough, they could use barbed-wire fencing, as is already installed at all three of the generating stations at and north of Bracebridge Falls.

And if you think that Bala is too beautiful and nobody would ever install barbed-wire fencing, the decision to use barbed-wire fencing in Bracebridge was made by Bracebridge Generation, the same company that would operate the proposed Bala hydro-electric generating station.

  3 Responses to “All Crown land in Bala would be controlled by the proponent”

  1. This is beyond appalling: How, on earth, can anyone support this giving away of our Crown Land to a private developer? And yes, I would expect they will use the same barbed wire fencing to keep the public off it as they have at the other stations.
    We will no longer have the beautiful tourist attraction, the natural beauty of the Falls that has got recognition from National Geographic and others. The construction, alone, will present great hardships for the town, especially the local businesses. We have very few places in Canada as unique as Bala, and surely they should be protected.
    Every news release is more alarming, with the proposal getting bigger in footprint, with the MNR and apparently the government totally on the side of this private developer.
    Ontario could still do something with Nanticoke – the buildings are still there and, of course, the grid starts from Nanticoke and goes up through the province (an enormous amount of land – what will happen to that? We do not need to be ruining Bala to make hydro not needed in Ontario when we already have a surplus.
    Thank you so much for your work to try to prevent this travesty and save the Bala Falls.

  2. It is amazing that without a shred of evidence to support the need for this project it will proceed because of the ever present GREED and CRONYISM and we as the polite and malleable citizens that we are will accept it and move on.
    Our only hope is that the Appeals process will see the whole thing for what it is and what it isn’t and do the right thing….STOP THE DAM!!!

    • You must stop the provincial liberal government who has allowed for this destruction that will take place. They have already destroyed the South River Falls. They also plan to go into Manitoulin. If there was ever to be protest, it should be over our right to our heritage and our scenic Northern towns to be kept intact. How is it possible that we allow them to do this ? It is NOT GREEN, anything but, ! It is about politics and money and not enough power generated to warrant such a catastrophe! They actually have given the okay for over 180 small dams that define the beauty of our small towns.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>