The proponent for the proposed hydro-electric generating station at the Bala falls committed for their environmental approval that: “any road closures be kept to a minimum and occur at times of least impact to the surrounding community.” For their final 2013 environmental approval, the proponent then updated this to state that even these closures would not be required.
Despite this, the proponent recently announced over 100 closures of Muskoka Road 169, and that these would be during daytime, twice a day, from at 9 am and 6 pm, for a half-hour duration each.
Now it gets even worse, the proponent is now blasting outside of those twice a day times, without any advance notification to the public.
The MOECC won’t enforce their environmental approval – apparently, if you’re building a generating station, anything goes.
- So next time you feel like blocking Muskoka Road 169, just say you’re building a generating station.
- While the proponent stated for their environmental approval they would not dump sand into the Moon River, they did this anyways and the MOECC wouldn’t stop it. So if you’d like to dump sand into lake, go ahead, just say you’re building a generating station.
- The proponent checked in the wrong place at their construction site for contamination, even though Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) would be expected to be found abandoned from the Bala #2 generating station which was demolished over 45 years ago, yet the MOECC allowed dumping all this excavated material and also dropping insecticide-laden shipping containers from China into the Moon River. So apparently, if you have some hazardous waste you’d like to get rid of, just dig a hole somewhere else and show there’s no pollution there, then dump whatever you’d like into the river. Just say you’re building a generating station.
Apparently we’re paying civil servants to cater to developers who have no respect or regard for the community or the environment.
The provincial government is demonstrating that we can abandon all common sense and that anarchy prevails. So encroach on other’s rights, harm the environment, anything goes, have at it.