The Fails Continue.

There was an opportunity to stop it. We missed it. If the people of the Province had become informed early enough we had a chance to really slow things down and ensure it was really what we needed and at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately we have passed the point of no return on Muskrat Falls and its now all about mitigation. The sad part is that as time goes on the situation seems to continue to get worse and our mitigation efforts will have to increase tenfold if we expect to have any hope of not having the rate payers of NL foot the bill. The newest issues to cause concern involve the ability to generate electricity and the ability to sell it. These two issues would seem to be important to a hydro project yet the current Government are content to say that both of these concerns are non issues by the usual rationale "trust us."

On the sales front the body responsible for monitoring utilities in Nova Scotia was allowed to do a complete review of their involvement in the project which is centered around the construction of the subsea transmission cable. It would have been nice for our very own PUB do the same we'll just have to "trust" in the decision making process that we have absolutely no input in. For their part the NS body decided that they support the project on the condition that a proper contract be signed that would include a possible guarantee for the purchase of power at rates that may be lower then what we could sell it to others for. Power sales would be good but we need the ability to sell that power at the highest rates possible to help remove so much of the burden from NL rate payers.

On the generation front there has been a court case filled by Quebec Hydro to clarify some of the details on the Upper Churchill details regarding the details around supply and management of water resources for generation. If the water resources at the Upper Churchill are managed in the best interests of Hydro Quebec it can significantly interfere with the reliable production capacity at Muskrat Falls. It has the potential of seriously limiting the reliable power available to NL. For the full translation of the details of what has been filed pop over to Labradore here.

The unfortunate truth is that these are only two of many concerns around this ill-conceived project and it is becoming painfully obvious that as the project continues this will be par for the course. Brace yourself.