{"id":2742,"date":"2011-04-11T09:54:49","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2011-12-29T14:09:53","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T19:09:53","slug":"were-not-rejecting-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/?p=2742","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;re Not Rejecting Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some have concluded that SaveTheBalaFalls.com is opposing the proposed generating station at the Bala Falls because we just can&#8217;t accept change.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s summarize the proposal:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Except for a few weeks in March and April when their proposed power station could not handle any more water, the proposed project would be taking 94% of the water from the falls, <strong>leaving only a trickle year-round for scenic flow<\/strong> to attract tourists, which are so fundamental to the area&#8217;s economy.<\/li>\n<li>The proponent agreed to convene a flow distribution committee to make recommendations on the scenic flow concerns, and they required the following (and we quote) <em>&#8220;Therefore, to summarize: SREL, as the proponent, will be finalizing the membership, mandate, agenda, and presentation material for this group and inviting guest speaker(s) over the next couple of weeks&#8221;<\/em>. And yet, after these volunteers met (some of whom drove up for the evening meetings three weeks in a row), the pre-agreed optional fourth meeting was not convened and their work was <strong>completely ignored<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The project would result in over 500&#8242; of the only publically-accessible shoreline in the area becoming <strong>too dangerous for access<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Despite our repeated requests to the proponent for something believable about the <strong>appearance of the project<\/strong>, they provided drawings that show:\n<ul>\n<li>A 5&#8242;-high, 30&#8242;-wide hoist mechanism entirely blocking the view from the proposed look-out.<\/li>\n<li>Rocks and dirt blocking the required ventilation.<\/li>\n<li>No information on the driveway retaining wall or fencing it would require.<\/li>\n<li>&#8230; and on and on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>That is, they want approval to proceed and we don&#8217;t even know how ugly it would be.<\/li>\n<li>While the proponent has been telling us for years that their proposed generating station would use a run-of-river operation, several months ago, they agreed with OPG that it would be <strong>cycled off and on<\/strong> more than once every day for at least eight weeks in the summer. But they have neglected to inform the public, and even now refer to this as &#8220;essentially run-of-river&#8221;. As there are implications for scenic flow, public safety, and fish habitat, an update to the environmental screening report should have been provided.<\/li>\n<li>As part of the Ministry of Natural Resources site release policy, the proponent would get control of Margaret Burgess Park (the green space north of the north falls) and Diver&#8217;s Point FOR 40 YEARS and being owned by the province this land may be exempt from municipal zoning by-laws and the proponent <strong>won&#8217;t provide written assurance<\/strong> that they would never during the term of their agreement with the MNR attempt to change or develop these properties.<\/li>\n<li>The proponent <strong>will not provide a completion bond<\/strong>, so if they ran into a technical problem, a cost overrun, or if they damaged the highway bridge or the north dam, they could just <strong>abandon the project<\/strong>, and leave the public with the mess of cleaning up their 300&#8242; of rocks dumped into the Moon River as their coffer dam, or to fix the 40&#8242;-deep trench they&#8217;d have to blast across the highway. The similar mess in Port Carling is still not resolved years later.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t rejecting change, this is rejecting a bad proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some have concluded that SaveTheBalaFalls.com is opposing the proposed generating station at the Bala Falls because we just can&#8217;t accept change. Let&#8217;s summarize the proposal: Except for a few weeks in March and April when their proposed power station could not handle any more water, the proposed project would be taking 94% of the water <a href='https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/?p=2742' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}