Residents ramp up power plant fight.
Hundreds of local residents - including Ivan Ozanic, left, Lesli Martin and Vojin Milosavljevic - swarmed Le Treport Convention Centre Thursday evening to rally against construction of the Greenfield South Power Plant. (Sept. 15, 2011)
Rob Beintema/MISSISSAUGA NEWS
Hundreds of frustrated residents rallied in protest Thursday night near the construction site of a controversial natural gas-fired power plant on the Etobicoke-Mississauga border.
Construction on the 280-megawatt plant in the Dixie Road-Dundas Street West area has begun, despite the environment minister's pledge to review the approval the Ontario government granted in 2008.
Eastern Power Ltd. is building the plant on a 4.5-hectare site on Loreland Drive near the Etobicoke Creek, Trillium Health Centre's Etobicoke hospital, Dorothy Ley Hospice, Sherway Gardens Mall, two new condo towers as well as residential west Etobicoke neighbourhoods like Alderwood and Markland Wood.
The City of Mississauga challenged the proposed plant at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) but lost in 2007. After years of inactivity on the site, residents' believed the proposal dead until Mississauga suddenly issued a building permit in May.
"We need your help to right the wrong perpetrated against this community," CHIP (Coalition of Homeowners for Intelligent Power) interim chair Greg Rohn told residents at the Sept. 15 rally. "It's time we made a loud, loud, loud (outcry)."
CHIP organizers urged residents in attendance to make the power plant a provincial election issue with their candidates.
"Our message needs to be: '(Premier) Dalton McGuinty, you've got to cancel this plant!'"
CHIP represents eight Etobicoke and Mississauga ratepayers' groups and more than 10,000 homeowners.
McGuinty told reporters in June the environment ministry would review its earlier approval.
"There's never a wrong time to do the right thing, and that's what we'll do," McGuinty said.
Residents have been demanding a decision before the Oct. 6 election.
Environment Minister John Wilkinson announced the review in June.
Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Kate Jordan said Monday following Thursday night’s meeting ministry staff have begun the review, but said it was “too early to speculate” when the review would be completed or what its outcome may be.
The ministry has asked Eastern Power to update both its air emissions and noise emissions modeling as part of the review. The company is co-operating, Jordan said.
“Certainly, we heard residents’ concerns. That’s the reason we agreed to undertake the review and given the fact of the land use changes such as the new condo residents since the original approval of the conditions in 2008,” Jordan said.
Former CHIP chair Tony Jones remained skeptical.
“There is no timeline (to the review). We think we’ve been mislead in the past,” Jones told the crowd. “We think we’ve been ignored. Laurel, I don’t like to contradict you in public, but we sent a letter to you and you didn’t respond for 16 months.”
Etobicoke-Lakeshore Liberal incumbent MPP Laurel Broten asked the minister to undertake the review in light of future expansions at Trillium hospital, the relative recent opening of Dorothy Ley Hospice and the two new condo towers near Sherway Gardens.
"We need the ministry of the environment to undertake a proper review," Broten told an increasingly angry crowd. "Charles (Sousa) and I have been very clear with our government. We don't support the construction of this plant at this site."
Sousa, the Mississauga South Liberal incumbent MPP, said he has been fighting power plants for years.
"(David) Balsillie's report concluded we cannot have any more emitters in our sensitive airshed," Sousa said, while urging residents to vote for candidates who can lead their fight in government.
"The premier's office is aware of your concerns. The power plant is proposed to be built next to the Etobicoke Creek. How dumb is that? It's 100 metres to the nearest home. You can't even put a windmill that close (to homes)."
Balsillie is the chair of the task force that studied the Southwest Greater Toronto Area Oakville-Clarkson Airshed.
Dr. David Mowat, Peel Region Medical Officer of Health, said he supports the further review by the environment ministry. He pledged to "carefully scrutinize" its results.
"We need to really solidly protect people's health from the adverse effects of poor air quality," he said. "That picture is not a good picture in this particular part of the world. We do suffer. Air quality needs to be taken seriously...
"In Ontario, we have not moved far enough and fast enough to protect our air quality."
The Loreland site is not far from the former coal-powered Lakeview Generating Plant the province closed a few years ago. Another proposed natural gas-fired plant in nearby Clarkson was cancelled.
Last month, the environment ministry announced it is launching a pilot project within the Oakville-Clarkson airshed, the next step in building on recommendations of the Southwest GTA Air Quality Task Force. Developing new terms of reference is among its first tasks.
Its intention: to develop a plan to improve air quality.
The task force report produced a "bombshell," charged Dr. Boyd Upper, an acknowledged air quality and respiratory health expert who has been involved in power plant fights for 20 years.
The ministry of the environment must now look at "cumulative pollution," in an airshed from all sources including vehicles, planes, homes and industry when issuing a certificate of approval to a power plant.
"When you're going to site a gas plant or any other major pollution, it should be sited where it will do the least harm to the fewest people," Upper said. "I think we're going to see a new way of dealing with pollution in Ontario and how new plants are going to be licensed."
Etobicoke Centre Liberal incumbent and former energy minister Donna Cansfield requested a stop work order of the ministry, but has not received a reply, she told The Guardian in an interview earlier this week.
Broten told the crowd there is no mechanism for the ministry to issue a stop work order.
Cansfield said her community's issue with the plant is airshed impacts. Air quality was not part of the City of Mississauga's argument against the power plant at the OMB, Cansfield said. Mississauga's fight dealt strictly with zoning.
"I think the site sucks. It's just wrong," Cansfield said. "The EA (environmental assessment) is being done by the same folks who did the Clarkson airshed study. It's the same airshed. It should be the same result...
"You have my absolute complete support on this."
Provincial Green Party candidates Cheryll San Juan (Etobicoke Centre) and Angela Salewsky (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), as well as Etobicoke-Lakeshore NDP candidate Dionne Coley also pledged to fight the plant.
While frustration simmered with the Liberal Ontario government's approval of the Eastern Power plant in 2008, many seemed equally frustrated with the Conservatives.
Not one Conservative candidate invited to the meeting attended.
"I used to be a card-carrying member of the Conservative party," CHIP's Rohn said. "I'm disgusted. Not one of them bothered to show up tonight. All the other parties did."
CHIP organizers urged residents to sign a petition, spread the word to neighbours and take home dozens of "Stop The Sherway Power Plant!" signs for their front lawns.
"We want people to see our signs amid all the election signs so candidates know this is the number one issue in our area," Rohn said.
- with a file from Torstar News Service