 Top News - May 3, 2008 |
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No EIAs for power lines
New lines around St. Albert not subject to environmental impact assessments |
By Kevin Ma
Staff Writer
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New power lines such as those proposed for construction around St. Albert will be exempt from environmental impact assessments, the province said this week, a change activists and opposition critics say is an insult to Alberta landowners.
Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner said Wednesday the province would no longer require power lines to be subject to environmental impact assessments (EIAs) before approval. These studies are complex scientific documents administered by Alberta Environment that examine a proposed project’s cumulative impact on its social, economic and physical environment.
Previously, said provincial spokesperson Kim Capstick, all power lines with over 500 kilovolts of capacity needed this assessment before they could be approved. Now assessments are optional for all lines.
The province found that these assessments were no longer necessary, Capstick said, and take years to compile, time staff could better spend assessing bigger projects. "These are poles in the ground. It’s a very small environmental footprint."
Decision insulting, say opponents
Naturalists blasted the decision, saying it ignores the environmental impacts of these lines and robs people of a vital tool needed to criticize them.
"I felt it was quite insulting for the department of the environment spokeswoman to flip it off as a bunch of poles in the ground," said Rob Gardner, spokesperson for the Federation of Alberta Naturalists. "If her staff didn’t find [the lines] important they wouldn’t be spending years of their time studying it."
Power lines can cut through forested areas and produce electromagnetic fields that may harm livestock, said Joe Anglin, head of the Lavesta Area Group of landowners that opposed a 500-kilovolt Edmonton-Calgary line last year. (The province suspended hearings on that line after the Energy and Utilities Board was found to have spied on the line’s opponents.) "Without the EIA, you have no idea how it impacts the environment."
Scott Schreiner of the power-line company Altalink disagreed, saying that the effects of power lines were well understood and could be controlled through careful line placement. "We still have to go through most of the same process," he said, and environmental studies would still be available through development applications and Alberta Utilities Commission hearings.
But impact assessments also require public participation, Gardner said, and let people see and criticize all the environmental data available on a project. "Without this process we don’t have that opportunity," he said. "Somehow on a weekend I have to go out and gather data."
Fights ahead
There are no 500-kilovolt lines currently under development in Alberta, Schreiner said, although a 250-kilovolt line near Edmonton is being upgraded to one. The Alberta Electric System Operator is also studying plans for several 500-kilovolt lines around St. Albert and Edmonton to power oil upgraders in the industrial heartland.
Capstick noted the minister still has the option to order an assessment on a line if he or she feels one is needed.
Liberal environment critic David Swann called the decision an abdication of responsibility, and said it was a sign Alberta Environment did not have the resources to keep up with the province’s pace of development. "This is an excuse for not doing their job."
If EIAs are now optional, Anglin said, the province should expect he and other landowners to fight for them. "What the minister is saying is, ‘we’re going to go through with these major projects but we don’t want to know how it’ll impact the environment,’" he said. "That doesn’t cut it." |
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