The Cost of Powering Ontario

Friday, October 30, 2026

Transmission expansion is bringing new pressures to Southwestern farms

By Stephanie McDonald

Dennis Roemmele could very well be one of the farmers most affected by new transmission lines soon to be constructed by Hydro One in the province’s Southwest. Two lines — one to be in place by 2030, and a second identified for future development — will cross through 850 acres of his and his brother’s farms in Middlesex County.

Roemmele is resigned to the work happening, but he’s not pleased about it.

In total, five new transmission lines have been announced in the Southwest. Speaking about the projects in April 2022, then provincial Minister of Energy Todd Smith said they would “power the new Stellantis–LGES battery plant (in Windsor), the growing greenhouse sector and other job creators.”

Roemmele is not swayed by this rationale.

“We’re being sacrificed,” he says. “It’s kind of like me going down there and knocking down a greenhouse, so I can plant corn for my benefit. But it’s supposedly for the good of Ontario, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Greenhouses & manufacturing drive demand

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Crown corporation responsible for managing Ontario’s power system, has predicted that electricity demand in the province’s Southwest will quadruple by 2035. They attribute this to residential and commercial growth, as well as increased demand from industrial and manufacturing facilities and greenhouses. The five new power lines are seen as essential to adequate supply of electricity in the region.

The first of the five lines is already in use and the second is under construction.

The third — the Longwood to Lakeshore Line — is set to pass through Roemmele’s farms, which are located close to its starting point at the Longwood Transformer Station, in the Municipality of Strathroy-Caradoc. From there, the line will travel 117 km southwest to the Lakeshore Transformer Station.

Three proposed routes for this line were shared publicly, with the chosen one announced in May 2025. The route crosses more than 330 properties, representing nearly 250 landowners, according to Hydro One. Construction of the line begins in 2027 and is expected to add approximately 550 megawatts to the grid, enough to power a city the size of London.

The fourth line will be built alongside the third, meaning landowners on this route will be doubly affected, though there isn’t yet a timeline for its construction. While Hydro One originally planned to acquire land rights for both lines at the same time, following a recent update from the IESO that did not identify an in-service date for this adjacent transmission line, they are seeking land rights for the initial line only at this time.

The fifth, the Windsor to Lakeshore Line, is in the consultation phase. Hydro One anticipates construction will begin in early 2029 and be complete by the end of 2032.

Construction worries

Roemmele knows what it’s like to farm around transmission towers as he already has some on his farms. “You work around them, but they’re awkward, especially in spring with a big sprayer.”

During the construction phase, temporary roads will cut across his fields, which he anticipates will make planting and spraying more time-consuming. And he’s also worried about damage to his drainage systems.

“There are bound to be some drains hit. Usually they can be fixed, but it may take a year or two before you see the damage. Trying to locate the problem is half the battle sometimes. We’ve got everything tiled nicely now, and so we’ll see what damage they do — but they claim they try not to hit the tile when they’re installing, and they check.”

For its part, Hydro One says they will consult with farmers ahead of time and use low-impact equipment, protective mats, and gravel pads or geotextiles during construction to avoid tile damage. If any damage does occur, Hydro One liaises with licensed contractors and farmers to make repairs, they say.

“We’re working with them the best we can,” Roemmele says, “and so far we’ve been treated pretty fair, but we haven’t got down to the nitty-gritty on pricing and stuff — whereas some of my neighbours already have proposals in front of them. They know exactly how much money they’re going to get, and so forth like that.”

The slow pace of the process, compared to neighbours, is a source of frustration for Roemmele. Nonetheless, he’s happy with the representative from Hydro One he’s working with. The rep has some farming background, “so he’s understanding of the farmers’ perspective,” Roemmele says.

A landscape transformed

Further south along the Longwood to Lakeshore Line, near the village of Glencoe, Andrew McGill, 38, farms with his dad and uncle. The lines will travel through three of the family’s farms. One of them is “the original McGill farm that my great-grandfather lived on from 1916 until he passed,” McGill says. A rotation of soybeans, corn and wheat is used in these 100- acre fields.

McGill has worked as a professional photographer in Toronto and New York City, and returned home to farm full-time six years ago. “It’s a special place for me,” he explains. “It’s been in the family for 110 years. It means quite a lot. It’s home. I feel a connection to the community, and to this land.”

McGill says he feels like he’s in “an in-between time,” knowing that the lines will go through their farms, but with little sense of how the towers will look or how imposing they will be.

“You don’t want, really, to have a big infrastructure project like this put on your land,” McGill says. With three routes initially proposed for the lines, he says you hope that one of the other two will be chosen.

“But it’s gotta go somewhere, and it just so happens to be here. And that’s the reality.”

McGill says he was recently working in one of the fields along the future path of the power lines, and visualizing what they would look and feel like. It got him thinking about practical issues the lines will present — such as navigating machinery around the towers, losing acreage and land being devalued — but also the coming changes to the landscape he loves.

“I was thinking about technologies in the past, like the railway, and how it changed the landscape forever. And it’s just part of our everyday life; it’s a fixture of the landscape. And it’s necessary for the economy, for business, for the country, right? And this power line is the same concept, really.”

“And I guess technology changes. We’re ripping out telegraph wires from 100 or 150 years ago that are no longer necessary. And so you wonder how long this infrastructure will last, but I think that, if the railway is any indication, it could last many centuries.”

Whether the power lines will prove as enduring as the railway or become obsolete like the telegraph remains to be seen. For now, McGill accepts that the lines coming through the family’s farms are an inevitability.

“They’ve decided that this is necessary, and this is the best path for it,” he says. “I guess we have to trust that this is true, and it will be useful, and it’s a good thing for the province and for the country.”

Land acquisition

Hydro One did not make a representative available for an interview, but did provide a written statement to Better Farming. They explain that property rights will be secured through either land purchases or easements. Landowners are compensated based on appraisals by independent third parties. “Easements typically allow farming activities to continue alongside transmission infrastructure, minimizing impacts to ongoing agricultural operations,” their statement reads.

Each landowner has a dedicated Hydro One Real Estate representative with whom they liaise throughout the land acquisition process.

Hydro One says that it is working with First Nations in the region on the “planning, development and construction of the lines.” Through its First Nation Equity Partnership Model, “proximate First Nations will be offered the opportunity to invest in a 50 per cent equity stake in the transmission line component” of the five new lines in the Southwest.

Species at risk

A further 20 km south from McGill along the transmission line is the home of retired civil servant Denise Dykema. She happened upon the property outside of Newbury in 2006, while commuting between work in London and her former home in Chatham.

As a naturalist, she says it was a perfect match for her, and for the past 20 years she’s been looking after the property’s 35-acre woodlot. It’s a bio-diverse Carolinian forest.

“I spend most of my time trying to look after the wildlife, encouraging and documenting the wildlife that’s on the property, and making it conducive to supporting that wildlife,” she says. So when she found out that the new power lines would run through her property and that three acres of mature Carolinian forest would be removed, she was devastated. Her reaction was “disbelief, anger, sadness, pretty much all of the processes that you go through with grief.”

She lists the wildlife mentioned in Canada’s Species at Risk Public Registry whose habitat in her forest may be threatened as construction of the lines proceeds: the Jefferson salamander, the Acadian Flycatcher, the red-headed woodpecker, and a variety of bats and flying squirrels.

“There are a lot of forests in Southwestern Ontario that are being clearcut. I know that we are a farming community, but I know we also have to support what else lives here, and that’s really, really important to me,” she says. “There’s just not enough of the woodlots left.”

Landowners will be compensated for trees that are removed, but Dykema says that “doesn’t matter to me at all. If they could find a way to raise that line and take it 25 feet higher over top of my woodlot and bring it down on the other side, I’d be perfectly happy — no compensation. I would rather have the woodlot intact.”

She has put in a request that the forest floor not be scraped, but with no guarantee that will happen, she’s been moving trilliums and native wildflowers out of the path of the lines to save them.

She’s also looking ahead to the post-construction period. “I’ve had some chats with the Conservation Authority about coming back in and restoring some of the areas, planting lower species, lower in height, species that could exist in an open wetland area.”

When asked about mitigating impacts on bio-diverse areas and species at risk, Hydro One explains “they will avoid and mitigate effects where practical, restore affected areas with compatible, lower-growing vegetation and fund habitat creation and enhancement through a Biodiversity Initiative.”

Dykema still rues that she won’t be able to grow anything over 10 feet tall. “I technically will now be paying taxes on three acres of woodlot that I won’t be able to use as a resource and as a support for the wildlife that’s here.”

No different than wind turbines

The Lakeshore Transformer Station, located about 45 km east of Windsor in the Municipality of Lakeshore, is where the Longwood to Lakeshore Line ends. It’s also where the fifth power line, connecting Windsor to Lakeshore, will begin. Two routes are under consideration, with an announcement of the preferred route expected in late 2026.

Jason Fuerth and his wife own 45 acres on one of the proposed routes.

Fuerth has been actively farming since graduating college in 1994 and has been on and off the board of the Essex County Federation of Agriculture (ECFA) for most of this time. He also works with his parents on their farm operation.

Like Roemmele, the Fuerth family already farms in fields with electricity lines going through them.

“I’ve been dealing with farming around hydro lines since the ’70s. So it’s just something you get to learn to deal with, and it is difficult to maneuver the tractors around the pylons, but you get used to it over time,” Fuerth says. “It’s no different than oil wells, wind turbines, and solar panels. It’s one of those things that you get used to, the nuisance.”

‘Why curse the devil’

As an ECFA Director, Fuerth has also been working with other farmers who might be impacted by this power line.

The reaction of farmers “ranges from complete opposition to a very similar stance to myself,” says Fuerth, who feels that it is futile to fight what is inevitable.

The ECFA has established a committee to work with the affected landowners and has held two information meetings so far. They’ve also retained legal counsel to work with them.

Fuerth gives credit to other county federation presidents and members who have been generous in sharing their knowledge and experience of power lines going through their areas. Once the route is announced, they’ll have another round of consultations and meetings with the landowners.

Fuerth says that while he’d rather not have the power line crossing through his farm, he’s also not opposed to it, knowing it has to be built somewhere.

“And if it’s going to go somewhere and they’re going to have to pay somebody, well, I might as well have the benefits as anybody else.

“So why curse the devil if you can benefit from it? Because there’s no way it’s not going to happen.” BF