In the same week when Lakeview was ruled out as a site for a replacement generating station, it turns out that Queen’s Park has denied the City Of Mississauga’s request for a full environmental assessment of the Greenfield South project. Barring an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board, it means Eastern Power Ltd. can proceed immediately with the 280-megawatt gas-fired plant, proposed for Loreland Ave., south of Dundas St. E., beside Etobicoke Creek.
“In accordance with the Environmental Screening Process, my decision allows (Eastern)...to proceed to implement the project, subject to obtaining the other permits and approvals that are required,” said Environment Minister John Gerretsen in his letter to the City.
Ward 1 councillor Carmen Corbasson, who last week was euphoric over the Lakeview decision, was disappointed by the latest announcement, especially since it had taken the Province more than two years to deliver the word. Because it was taking so long, she’d hoped for a favourable decision.
“I don’t know where we can go from here,” Corbasson told The News. “It appears we have done all we can.”
“Bumping up” the environmental assessment, she said, was necessary given the many unanswered questions surrounding the project, especially its close proximity to residential neighbourhoods.
“If the plant is built, it has the potential to seriously impact the health and safety of my residents and the residents to the north in councillor (Maja) Prentice’s ward,” Corbasson warned.
What puzzles Corbasson is that the Province has substantially downsized its plan to bring online 2,500 megawatts of new generation capacity to replace the power previously produced by now-closed coal-fired plants. She said the decreased demand of 850 megawatts could be met with one large facility.
“You’d think it would make more sense to construct one large power plant — and put it in a suitable location — rather than two or three smaller ones, such as Greenfield South, in what are primarily residential areas,” she said. “There are sites, even in my own ward, that are much more suitable.”
Just last week, Mayor Hazel McCallion said the same thing.
“We’re prepared as a City — have always been — to look at power generating plants. So we have accepted our responsibility to make sure we don’t object to them if they are in the right location,” she told Energy Minister George Smitherman.
Greenfield South “is in a very unacceptable area and is strongly opposed by the citizens,” McCallion said.
Mississauga East-Cooksville MPP Peter Fonseca said he had taken up the matter with then-Energy Minister Lauren Broten and Hubert Vogt, vice-president of Eastern Power, as far back as two years ago.
He’d made clear to Vogt, he said, that the City was updating its current municipal bylaw, which dated back to 1954.
“It is my understanding that the new plan would not allow the construction of a power plant at Loreland and Mattawa Aves.,” he said.
Besides Greenfield, there remains another controversial power plant proposal in Mississauga. New York-based Sithe Global Power has received virtually all approvals to build an 825-megawatt plant on Southdown Rd. in Clarkson.
McCallion is also opposed to that project, noting airshed studies undertaken by the Province show air quality in the area is already compromised.
jchin@mississauga.net
