Residents raise concerns about proposed hydro plant

Residents raise concerns about proposed hydro plant

LISA TALLYN Staff Writer More than 100 area residents were at Pineview Public School Wednesday night to learn more about the hydro-generating station being proposed for the Hornby area. The public meeting was hosted by TransCanada Energy Ltd., which hopes to build the natural gas-fuelled, combined cycle power plant on an 80-acre parcel of land located on the southwest corner of Sixth Line S. and Steeles Ave. in the Halton Hills 401-407 Gateway Business Park (401 Corridor). The station is to have a generating capacity of approximately 680 mega-watts. Neil Myers, Director Power Development Engineering for TransCanada, said the footprint of the station would encompass approximately 25 acres of the site. It is to include two industrial gas turbines, two heat recovery steam generators, a steam turSee HYDRO, pg. 3

Hydro plant plans outlined for residents

Continued from pg. 1 bine generator and an air-cooled condenser or cooling tower. TransCanada representative Finn Greflund said noise levels coming from the plant would not exceed Ministry of Environment (MOE) requirements of 50 decibels during the day and 45 decibels at night. Existing ambient noise in the area is currently higher than the amount of noise the plant would generate, he said. Myers said the plant would have two stacks, likely between 150 and 200 feet tall, but some people at the meeting had concerns about emissions. Most of the chemical emissions from those stacks would be carbon dioxide, but also some other byproducts of combustion such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxides. Environmental manager for the company, Christine Cinnamon, said Thursday emission rates for the Halton Hills station hadn't been determined yet, but another plant they plan to build in downtown Toronto is to have annual emission rates of 1,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides, 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and 4 tonnes of sulphur dioxide. Cinnamon said those are all well below MOE requirements. She stressed the Toronto plant will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and while the operating hours of the Halton Hills generating station haven't been determined yet, it isn't expected to run around the clock. Myers said the company has to meet MOE emission rates and is currently doing environmental studies to determine the height requirement of the towers to meet air quality standards in the neighbouring area. Concerns were raised by some at the meeting about the amount of water that could be coming from the stacks, resulting in icy conditions on nearby Hwy. 401. Myers explained that it hasn't been determined yet what cooling system would be used, but if an air-cooled system is utilized no water vapour would be released from the stacks. He said they currently don't have access to the amount of water that would be needed for a water-cooling tower system, and if they went that route they would have to pipe more water to the site. A hybrid system, combining both air and water, is also being considered. Myers said the plant would have approximately 25 employees in total, and 10-14 would be there Monday to Friday. He said they would like to run an underground transmission line in the Sixth Line road allowance to hook in with the Hydro One corridor south of Hwy. 401. Other residents at the meeting raised concerns about traffic and dust they would have to contend with when the plant is being constructed, future expansion plans of the generating station, and whether Halton Region Conservation Authority had been consulted. "I have a great concern about what this is going to do to my property value," said one area resident, who added the plant should be built where the transmission stations are located. He said residents were expecting prestige development in the 401 Corridor. "Now we have generating plants and truck stops," he said. Myers said the company looked seriously at six different sites for the proposed plant and the Hornby location was considered the best because of the proximity to the Hydro corridor, the zoning and servicing on the property. The proposed generating station is to help ease the electricity crisis for the western Greater Toronto Area and the TransCanada proposal is one of six for similar stations to be located in Halton Hills or Milton submitted to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA). The other companies are expected to hold public meetings over the summer on their proposals to gauge public reaction. Details are not being released by the OPA on those proposals. The OPA is to award one of the six companies with the contract by the end of September. The plant is expected to be up and running by 2010. (Lisa Tallyn can be reached at ltallyn@independentfreepress.com)