The current
crisis over methylmercury levels threatening Lake Melville, after flooding at
the Muskrat Falls reservoir, cannot be viewed in isolation from the other
issues that plague the project - especially its frightening (and growing) price
tag.
This is a
renewed call for Premier Ball to put the project on “ice” at least for this
winter.
The interregnum
will afford a full review of the methylmercury issue and give the public an
opportunity (one they should demand) to examine its economic consequences for
them, as ratepayers.
Additional
clear cutting and soil removal in the reservoir area can only add to an already
over-burdensome cost. The Government’s way of dealing with the environmental
issues seems at best incremental. The public can have no confidence the
Province can afford to have this project completed.
Nalcor’s
handling of the methylmercury issue and other concerns are emblematic of a
Corporation ill-suited to build a megaproject. Consider the issues described in
a Paper entitled “The Disconnect Between EA & Implementation: A Look at the
Methylmercury Issue in the Lower Churchill Project” by Meinhard Doelle,
Director of the Marine & Environmental Law Institute at Dalhousie
University (November 20, 2015).
The Paper
constitutes solid evidence of why Nalcor and the Provincial Government have
such a mess on their hands at Muskrat Falls. "EA" stands for “environmental
assessment”. Doelle was one of the five EA Panel Members.
The author
points out that for as long as environmental assessments have been carried out there
has existed a “demand for better follow-up, monitoring, adaptive management,
quality control, and better integration of EA into regulatory processes.” He
refers to “academic research by Schartup et al. (2015) (which) sheds new light
on the fate of methylmercury in Lake Melville” noting that the “study found
that rivers are a major source of mercury to Lake Melville and make up more
than 85% of total inputs.”
With regard
to the EA on the Lower Churchill, Doelle states: “some of the panel’s
recommendations on methylmercury were rejected, and it seems that others that
were accepted have not been effectively implemented to date.”
Says Doelle:
“One of the purposes of any follow-up and monitoring program is to identify
whether predictions made during the EA turn out to be accurate, and to ensure
an adequate response to such prediction errors. It seems clear from the 2015
Schartup Study that the predictions made by Nalcor with respect to
methylmercury have now been shown to be inaccurate. What is troubling is that
there does not appear to be a mechanism in place to ensure an effective
adaptive management response that considers what can be done at this stage of
the project to address the risk of methylmercury contamination in Lake Melville.
If this impression is accurate, this is a serious flaw in the follow-up and
monitoring approach that needs to be addressed….”
Nalcor
assumed it could ignore the Schartup Study in 2015, ignore the recommendations
of the EA Panel, and ignore scientists like Doelle. It hoped it would be able
to ignore the Harvard University Study, too, which demonstrated scientific
evidence that methylmercury levels would have a “sharp increase” after
reservoir flooding – in Lake Melville by as much as 380% - if only partial clearing
of the trees and soils occur. Back in April Nalcor V-P Gilbert Bennett touted the
Company’s nationally recognized experts to refute the Harvard research. Nalcor hoped that passivity on the Island to
the project’s economic consequences would receive the same gesture of nonchalance,
in Labrador, on environmental issues, too. Nalcor has run out of luck.
Whether
contrived project estimates, contrived electrical demand forecasts, contrived
oversight practices, the unwillingness to allow an independent panel to review
the “quick clay” instability problem at the North Spur, or the assembly of a project
management team that debases the term “international experts”, the inability of
Nalcor to assuage the concerns of local indigenous people with good science is
just one more example of a project that claims credibility only if no one
objects or asks contentious questions.
While the
Liberals inherited the project from the Tories, they have chosen to carry on
the same practices of obfuscation, flat-footedness, and stone-walling practiced
by their predecessors.
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| Perry Trimper, MHA Lake Melville |
Environment
Minister Perry Trimper, who just happens to be the MHA for Lake Melville, shares
this responsibility. Trimper, a scientist having a long association with the
Muskrat Falls project, understands the importance of sustained research to
comply with the EA process. Trimper knows,
or ought to know, his statutory duties as Minister of Environment set him
apart from other Cabinet colleagues.
But Perry
Trimper has been as flat-footed as the Premier and as docile as Minister of
Natural Resources. He, like his predecessor, is content that the Government,
having given Nalcor a mandate to construct Muskrat Falls, should be guided by
its values and its failed management style.
It seems
Trimper never quite understood that he has an obligation to be guided not by
Nalcor but by the principles of independence his environmental enforcement role
commands.
One might
reasonably expect that after a full year as Minister his Department would be
able to confirm that the EA Panel’s recommendations and Nalcor’s commitments are
being followed up with solid research and analysis. It was his duty to require enforcement
especially where his Tory predecessor had failed.
The public is
paying again for Nalcor’s insouciance, its lack of professionalism, and for
Ball’s, Trimper’s, and Coady’s naivety and foolhardiness.
Only a fool
would argue a claim to “green” power includes an entitlement to pollute lakes
and rivers, especially one as large as Lake Melville.
Equally, no
project gets an open tab on the public purse. A $11.4 billion figure has been assigned
to a project barely half finished. The cost plus contract arrangement given
Astaldi, or whether its multi-million dollar claims against Nalcor have been
settled are matters kept away from public view. There are no project updates – even
Reports of the Independent Engineer are kept under cover, in spite of demands
from David Vardy to have them released under ATIPPA. Should we not conclude more
bad news awaits an uneasy electorate?
What is the price
of disclosure, anyway, even for a Government that promised to open the books”
on Muskrat Falls?
It is one
thing for Trimper and co. to propose more wood cutting within the reservoir
area but it is far from certain whether this undefined – even opaque - proposal will have any net effect on
the amount of methylmercury produced, if it will satisfy protesters demands, or
how much it will add to current project costs.
The public
should not permit this Government to commit to further expenditures without the
certainty of an end game.
In short, it
is time for a full accounting of Muskrat Falls. We need to know - before more
funds are committed - if the Province can afford to complete this misguided
scheme, or if it is the Government’s intention to blunder ahead until the Bond
market stops lending us money.
That levels
of methylmercury are far greater than Nalcor admitted to the Environmental
Review Panel, and that the Corporation has failed to diligently comply with
their recommendations, is now added to a multiplicity of other blunders.
Any right-minded
person would demand that this project be stopped until its continued
feasibility is investigated and exposed in open forum. Again, the public faces
the reality its energy agency is unable to handle a single crisis involving
questions of diligence and competency.
I suggest
that the Government put this project “on ice” for the winter. The truth about
Muskrat’s environmental and economic feasibility will have to come out
sometime. This should happen before the project breaks the Treasury.
Why not
right now?