What about THE MONEY?
It’s a given that building a hydroelectric generating station in the middle of a tourist town’s major tourist attraction is problematic. Why then would a private entrepreneur want to attempt it? Much more money of course! Bala is on “the grid” which means a lot less money would have to be spent on transmission infrastructure (lines, towers, right-of-ways etc.) and that means faster payback and bigger profits.
Unfortunately local residents, cottagers, businesses, visitors, charitable organizations, non-profit organizations and local governments would all have to pay for the private entrepreneur’s increased profits.
It’s money out of our pockets every time a vehicle, private or commercial, is made to wait because of construction activities like drilling, blasting, rock removal and trucking.
It’s money out of our pockets every time a customer avoids shopping in Bala because of construction activities like dump trucks, cement trucks, traffic gridlock, back hoes and cranes.
It’s money out of our pockets if people are no longer drawn to Bala by the natural beauty of Lake Muskoka’s waters falling into the Moon River.
It’s money out of our pockets if business, vacation and residential property values decline because Bala is the host of an ugly parasitic power plant in the middle of what was once upon a time our most valuable asset.
What about WATER LEVELS?
The proposed industrial power plant would receive a subsidized rate of $0.1108 per kilowatt hour of power generated and in addition would receive a 32% bonus of $0.035 per kilowatt hour if the power was generated during peak demand for electricity. This means that there would be a huge incentive to run the power plant during the daytime and shut it down during the nighttime in effect turning Lake Muskoka into a bladder at the beck and call of a private entrepreneur. Boating and docking would become problematic. This generating mode would cause water-level fluctuations, leading during freeze up to the formation of ice-push ridges and cracks along the shoreline, which would impede use of the waterway for winter activities especially snowmobiling. Variable water levels during winter freeze up would result in much more ice damage to shoreline structures and habitat.