{"id":4811,"date":"2014-06-09T22:37:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T02:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/?p=4811"},"modified":"2014-09-01T21:06:51","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T01:06:51","slug":"what-the-proponent-doesnt-want-you-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/?p=4811","title":{"rendered":"What the proponent doesn’t want you to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

The proponent claims they are communicating with the public, but it all self-serving. For example, they don’t tell us that …<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Margaret Burgess Park would be fenced-off forever<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. It would always<\/strong> be too dangerous to be in or near the water at the base of the north falls<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 or to Scuba dive from Diver\u2019s Point<\/strong> and risk getting sucked into their intake\u2019s 43\u2019 deep trash rack.<\/li>\n
  3. We still don’t know what the appearance of this would be. And now it would apparently be 48% bigger<\/strong> than before<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and 25 times the size<\/a> of the Bala #2 generating station. Their proposal is simply too big for Bala.<\/li>\n
  4. Docking<\/strong> at the Town Docks on the Moon River would be dangerous<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
  5. The proposed generation station would begin operation at about noon on \u2153 of summer days<\/a> (just when people would most likely be in the water just a few feet away) and would operate at full capacity an average of 21 days each summer.<\/li>\n
  6. The proponent refused to examine any of the many negative economic impacts<\/a> (both during construction and long-term), so any economic benefits the proponent claims are meaningless<\/strong>. Furthermore, their plan to protect Margaret Burgess Park would be to cut down almost all of the trees on the Township’s Portage Landing area south of the proposed construction site, and pile it full of blasted rock so they can drive dump trucks down it. Portage Landing is not “vacant township land”; it is the location of the traditional and historic Bala Portage. This land is now natural and is designated a Cultural Landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act. The proponent could not restore it to its current natural state, and further they would surround it with 10′-high retaining walls both at the highway to the east and the proposed generating station to the north.<\/li>\n
  7. The proponent is reneging on many of their most important commitments<\/strong><\/a> from their original proposal.<\/li>\n
  8. Too many aspects of the proponent’s current plans do not conform to their environmental approval<\/strong> (size and location of cofferdams, footprint larger, Margaret Burgess Park fenced-off and trees removed).<\/li>\n
  9. The water level of Lake Muskoka would be raised at least 5 or 6 cm for some months of the year (apparently to increase the proponent’s profits), increasing the risk of flooding<\/a> when there are heavy rains.<\/li>\n
  10. During construction, traffic would be stopped for up to 1\u00bd hours<\/a> for blasting, which would continue for a month.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The proponent’s proposal is too big and too dangerous. And their continuing attempts to hide this from the public are the very opposite of the “proper and full consultation” they promised and is required by law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The proponent claims they are communicating with the public, but it all self-serving. For example, they don’t tell us that … Margaret Burgess Park would be fenced-off forever. It would always be too dangerous to be in or near the water at the base of the north falls \u2013 or to Scuba dive from Diver\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4811","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\/4811","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=4811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savethebalafalls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}