Jan 182016
 

Thank you Councillors Sandy Currie, Phil Harding, Donelda Kruckel, and Ruth-Ellen Nishikawa

These Councillors “get it”, they understand that:

  1. The proposed hydro-electric generating station in Bala would be extremely dangerous – it would have over TEN TIMES the exiting tailrace flow of the Wilson’s Falls generating station (which is a few km north of Bracebridge), that caused the drowning of a 16 year old boy there in 2008.
     
  2. The Township of Muskoka Lakes wishes to sign a lease for the proponent to use three parcels of Township land to facilitate the construction of the proposed Bala generating station.
     
  3. The public should be allowed to see and comment on this proposed lease before it is signed – for example, because the proponent:
    • Could choose to use the Township’s Portage Landing and parking lots as construction sites for 20 years.
    • Plans to build a portage on the Moon River directly adjacent to their extremely dangerous tailrace even though in May 2013 the MNR decided this area was so dangerous that the MNR has since not allowed portaging on, or even the public walking on, this MNR land.

    You can see for yourself the proponent’s own plans to build a portage directly adjacent to their tailrace …

    • A zoomed-in and marked-up plan view is here, and elevation view is here.
    • The proponent’s full-page drawing is here, you can see it on the proponent’s own web site here, and their link to the full-page drawing is here.

That is, the MNR says the Portage Landing area is already too dangerous for portaging so in May 2013 prohibited use of this area …

So why is the Township of Muskoka Lakes about to vote to sign a lease for which the proponent would build a portage in the same area which the MNR says is too dangerous.

At the Township of Muskoka Lakes Council meeting on Friday January 15, 2016 there was about to be a vote to approve signing this 20-year lease before the public could see or even provide comment on it, so Councillors Sandy Currie, Phil Harding, Donelda Kruckel, and Ruth-Ellen Nishikawa did all they could do to stop this vote – they walked out.

Taxpayers demand, deserve, and have a right to open and transparent government, thank you Councillors Sandy Currie, Phil Harding, Donelda Kruckel, and Ruth-Ellen Nishikawa for strongly reminding the rest of Township Council of this.
 

Court Decision Appeal
In our November e-Newsletter, we noted our concerns that the Township of Muskoka Lakes is not following all of the required procedures in their plan to lease three parcels of land to the proponent to facilitate their proposed construction. As a result of the Township not responding to these concerns, SaveTheBalaFalls.com subsequently initiated legal action.

As noted in our previous e-Newsletter, the Court’s decision was to dismiss our legal action. After some consideration, SaveTheBalaFalls.com initiated an Appeal of this Court decision and the Township of Muskoka Lakes was informed of this on Thursday last week. As noted above, Township Council has apparently decided to ignore this Appeal.
 

The public safety concerns
We have detailed our public safety concerns here and here.

To those who would like this generating station built as currently proposed, we would like to begin a respectful dialogue to understand your views on these concerns, please contact us at info@SaveTheBalaFalls.com.

  One Response to “e-Newsletter – January 18, 2016”

  1. Appreciate it for helping out, superb information.

 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>