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by BETTER FARMING STAFF
The Ontario Municipal Board’s go-ahead to a solar development on farmland in East Hawkesbury Township comes just as the province prepares to release regulations that would ban solar developments from prime agricultural land.
The decision approving Ottawa-based Solaris Energy Partners Inc. zoning request amendment, site plan application and land severance plan was delivered verbally at a hearing that wrapped up on Tuesday in the township, an hour’s drive southeast of Ottawa. The company had complained that the township didn’t process the applications within the provincially prescribed time limit.
The decision follows the Board’s May decision to strike down a township bylaw that had suspended the farm’s development.
But according to a Toronto Star report, on June 2, George Smitherman, Ontario’s energy minister, warned that regulations under the new Green Energy Act would restrict solar development on prime agricultural land.
Robert Kirby, East Hawkesbury’s mayor, says he hasn’t had a chance to calculate how much the municipality has spent in fighting the development.
“We tried to convince them (the province) different and probably within the next six to eight weeks the province will object to this kind of stuff on Class 1, 2 and 3 (agricultural) land.”
Greg Pruner, Solaris president and CEO, says he’s encouraged by the Board’s decision but says the provincial regulations “would have a big impact” on the solar industry if they are approved. He notes that Statistics Canada classifies more than five million acres of land in Ontario as suitable for agriculture. Solar parks would only impact a tenth of one per cent of that amount. “So it’s a very insignificant piece.”
In the meantime, it’s full steam ahead on the East Hawkesbury project.
“We will probably begin site preparation details in the fall with the bulk of construction happening as soon as we’re able in the new year,” he says.
The project, located on 300 acres, is projected to generate 30 megawatts of power, enough to supply 5,400 homes.
Pruner says concerns about the farm’s visual appearance will be addressed using buffers. He says his company has consulted experts who confirm the development will not generate stray voltage, another major concern aired by residents during a special Monday night session of the hearing. BF
Comments
As is the case with every form of government interference in the marketplace, it is opposite of what should be done and public debate, both for and against, are beside the point.
The issue is not where a solar park ought to be located. The real story is the outworking of government interference in the lives of ordinary, every day citizens. And in particular, the consequences of yielding personal freedoms, property and responsibility to politicians.
Consider:
[1] There would be no solar farm if the Ontario government could not guarantee $0.42/kwh to Solaris Energy Partners. This massive transfer is only possible because government can expropriate the private earnings (property) of one group of individuals in order that the loot may be given to Solaris Energy Partners. In the absence government guaranteeing that taxpayers will be on the hook for costs (i.e., an activity predicated on legalized theft -- exprorpriation for the more delicate reader), generating electricity through photovoltaic cells is completely uneconomic. It is a money loosing activity at almost any scale of production in almost every conceivable circumstance. This is the most important point --- by far.
[2] A closely related issue is the lack respect for private property and an absence of personal accountability which are the hallmark of how individual freedoms have been usurped by governments in Canada. The solar farm issue in East Hawkesbury reveal that planning land use in Canada is eerily similar to that in National Socialist Germany. Elected politicians are trumping the decisions of private persons by directing how land (and other resources) are to be used, when, by whom and at what price. This is the essense of public-private organizations like Solaris Energy Partners.
Land and other resourses are privately owned in only a superficial sense when authorities permit owners to engage only in politically approved activities. This is the current situation and it is dangerous. Because government and taxpayers are on the hook, decision makers (like those at Solaris) face limited and socialized downside risk while enjoying all other the benefits conferred by government granted privilege. The resulting inevitable absence of personal accountability when things go wrong -- and they will -- and sense of entitlement to privilege turn even the best intentioned individuals into amoral, deplorable and despicable characters.
So score one for the social engineers in East Hawkesbury, Toronto and Ottawa. If you believe in freedom, private property and individual responsiblity, events in East Hawkesbury ought to provide further evidence of the need to move somewhere else.
I was at the hearings, and that was a sad spectacle. Solaris's attorney was indicating evrytime he had a chance that the barriers were "non-negotiable". His message was clear: Our battle was already lost and the hearings were a masquerade. These intimidations included barging in the room and just sitting down, during discussions between farmers and their attorney, and pushed the farmers into settling for crumbs.
Some of the "visual barriers" Mr Pruner is speaking of are 1.8m cedar trees, maintained at 1.8m. The panels will be installed with their lower point at 1.7m and their highest at 3.4m. There were all kinds of drawings "proving" their efficiency using 45 degree lines drawn at 20 degrees, and vice versa. The specialist's presentation was flying in the face of laws of physics, but were fine for what he considered as uneducated people. The experts in stray voltage that Solaris consulted (pro-bono work for sure) would be hard pressed to cite an instance where stray voltage was ever actually predicted.
What happened in the St-Eugene Town Hall during that week is a prime example of why people are bitter about politics and lobbying. Democracy? Respect? Not that time.
That bumbling bonehead McGuinty has mismanaged Ontario's enery plan ever since he took office. Just look at his record on nuclear, coal, biofuel, wind, and now solar energy. He's done more flip-flopping than a trampeline-full of bikini-clad grandmothers. Politicians have no business in the electricity industry. We should be buying electricity from private industry and paying market prices. The alternative is the present day farce where the government subsidizes it's production by inefficient means and sells it to the public at a fraction of it's actual cost as a vote-buying scam, while offering to buy our old beer fridges and passing legislation to force us to use dangerous mercury-filled fluorescent light bulbs. I wish Mike Harris had followed through with his plans to privatize the whole works.
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