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DAM-L Quebec: new small hydro on Rouge, oither rivers
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 13:16:52 -0400
To: dam impacts discussion list <dam-l@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
From: Philip Raphals <raphals@centrehelios.org>
Subject: 425 MW of new small hydro in Quebec (news article and
editorial)
Montreal Gazette, p. A1
Monday 28 May 2001
Dam it? Outdoor lovers outraged
LYNN MOORE
The Gazette
Quebec's largest white-water festival will be wiped out
and sports on
the popular Rouge River and other waterways might be
crippled if the
province goes ahead with its small-dams project,
outdoor enthusiasts
warned yesterday.
The project, announced Thursday by Natural Resources
Minister
Jacques Brassard, would put 36 small private
hydro-electric dams on 24
rivers by 2005. Some of the targeted sites are popular
canoeing,
kayaking and rafting venues.
The project "is absurd, unjustifiable and unjust," said
Jasmin Lefebvre, a
lawyer and avid canoeist who, with other volunteers,
helped organize
the Festival d'Eau Vive de la Haute Gatineau, now in
its fifth year.
The small private dams will primarily benefit the
dam-owners and U.S.
companies that will be able to buy cheaper electricity.
But they will
destroy valuable natural resources that bring pleasure
to thousands of
Quebecers and draw tourists, Lefebvre and others
concerned with
protecting wilderness areas said yesterday.
In an era where tourism authorities the world over are
promoting and
developing adventure and eco-tourism, the word will
spread that
Quebec "is cementing over its rapids and tourists won't
come," Lefebvre
said.
Last year, about 800 people, including U.S. tourists,
participated in the
whitewater festival held on an 8-kilometre stretch of
the Gatineau near
Maniwaki at the end of August, he said.
Festival Promotion
This year, the provincial government - through the
sports and leisure
branch of the Municipal Affairs Department - offered a
$10,000 subsidy,
in part to promote the festival, which has in previous
years been touted
by Tourism Quebec, Lefebvre said.
If the dams go through, instead "of rapids along a
pristine stretch of
river with beautiful scenery, there will be two
(man-made) lakes and
lots of concrete," Lefebvre said.
Yesterday, as many as 1,000 people were enjoying water
sports like
rafting and kayaking on the Rouge River, said Chris
Phelan, owner of
New World River Expeditions, one of the firms that
offers rafting on the
river.
Phelan said that he heard Quebec lifted its moratorium
on small-dam
construction but didn't yet know the details of what it
planned for the
Rouge.
According to information available on the Web site of
the Quebec
Natural Resources Department and elsewhere, a dam is
planned for the
Seven Sisters area of the Rouge near Grenville. It is
not clear whether
the dam will be placed at the falls or the rapids.
"If they flood the rapids (for the dam), they would
destroy the
recreational potential of the river," said Phelan,
whose firm owns land
along the river and has a lease with Hydro-Quebec that
enables it to
access the riverbed, which is owned by the utility.
Flooding rapids on one of the most popular rivers in
Quebec doesn't
make sense, Phelan added. "Why would they target one of
the few
places (handy to Montreal and Ottawa) where there are
recreational
opportunities?"
Phelan predicted that the outfitters and small
businesses that use the
river, as well individuals, "will resist that to the end."
Brassard's spokesman did not respond to an interview
request
yesterday.
Government's Decision
Should the project go ahead, about 425 megawatts of
power would be
generated by the 36 dams. Individual dams producing
more than five
megawatts will be subject to public hearings.
Lefebvre, who described himself as a former Parti
Quebecois member,
said the government's decision to build small dams is
contrary to what
PQ members have told the party they wanted.
He pointed out that the plan calls for the
dam-promoters to enter
agreements with municipalities near the dams and said
that aspect
smacks of a bid by the province to curry favour with
the regions.
"We are like a banana republic if we go ahead with
development
projects like this, which are not sustainable over the
long term," he
said.
Alain Bonin, also involved in the Gatineau festival,
noted that Quebec
rivers - including the Gatineau - are laced with dams
that are no longer
used, but which remain eyesores.
"Once a dam is built, the damage is done. You can't go
back," he said.
A spokesman for the association representing Quebec's
canoe and
kayak clubs said the group adamantly opposes the dam
project.
- For more information about the dam project and a list
of rivers that
would be affected, the province's announcement can be
found on the
Web at www.mrn.gouv.qc.ca/2/23/230/intro.asp
- The Web site for the Federation Quebecoise de
Canoe-Kayak d'Eau
Vive has information about dams that will be
supplemented shortly. It
can found at: www.canot-kayak.qc.ca
- Lynn Moore can be reached by E-mail at:
moorel@thegazette.southam.ca
Lead Editorial
Tuesday 29 May 2001
Say no to the dams
The Gazette
In a move suggesting that the provincial government has
either taken
leave of its senses or is gearing up for the next
election, Natural
Resources Minister Jacques Brassard has announced that
private buyers
can build hydro-electric dams on 24 of the province's
most beautiful and
well-used recreational waterways. The government has
put no minimum
price on the 36 sites it has listed as potential dam
sites. If all 36 sites
were dammed, private promoters could generate as much
as 425
megawatts of electricity, even though barely a year and
a half ago the
Quebec Energy Board recommended they be given a maximum
quota of
150 MW.
Gilles Lefrancois, the head of the Quebec Association
for the Production
of Renewable Energy, an association of private energy
producers, was
particularly pleased by the energy board's abandoning
the concept of a
"socially acceptable price" of energy in favour of a
"commercially
acceptable" price.
Those who can see past the Parti Quebecois's need to direct
regional-development dollars into the hinterland before
the next election
are less pleased with these latest developments.
Consider some of the
sites the government has suggested could be dammed by
2005: the
Sainte-Anne falls on the Sainte-Anne River; the
Sainte-Ursule falls on
the Maskinonge River; the Neuf falls on the Batiscan
River in the town
of Notre-Dame-de-Montauban; and the Petite-Nation and
Gatineau
rivers in the Outaouais. The Rouge River in the
Laurentians is another,
highly controversial site where, every spring and
summer, thousands of
vacationers from Montreal and Ottawa go to canoe, raft
and kayak in
the whitewater rapids and limpid pools.
In a province where there is no pressing need to expand
hydro
production for domestic consumption, the idea that some
of the best
recreational sites should be stopped up with concrete
defies logic. While
the initial impulse to pry some of the hydro-electric
production out of
Hydro-Quebec's monopolistic hands is a good one, there
is no need to
sacrifice some of the province's finest recreational
spots over it. It is
important to keep in mind that those whom the
small-dams project is
expected to benefit are the private dam owners and the
U.S. market,
with private electric companies able to buy electricity
more cheaply.
The province has promised that local communities will
be consulted
before a dam is allowed to be constructed, but it does
not explain what
constitutes a community. Will the vacationers count as
part of a
community? Or the tourist companies whose livelihood
also depends on
the rivers and falls? They surely have as much a right
to make their
living from their natural resources as private dam owners.
There is also the thorny problem of Hydro-Quebec now
saying the
small-dam project is not viable financially. A year
ago, the energy board
ruled that Hydro-Quebec, which has about 33,000 MW of
installed
power, should pay the private producers 4.5 cents per
kilowatt-hour, a
figure equal to or less than what the utility
calculated it would cost to
develop large power sites.
Now, however, Hydro-Quebec has revised its estimates
and says that a
dam project with production costs estimated to be more
than three
cents a kilowatt/hour is unacceptable. Not one of the
small-dam
projects can produce electricity at less than three
cents a MW/hour.
Will this lead the local hydro-electric producers to
pare their costs to a
minimum? How safely can it be done?
If ever a project needed to go back to the drawing
board, this is one.
Philip Raphals
Directeur adjoint / Associate Director
Le Centre Hélios / Helios Centre for Energy Research
326, boul. St-Joseph, suite 100
Montréal (Quebec)
Canada
H2T 1J2
(514) 849-7091 (telephone)
(514) 849-6357 (fax)
raphals@centrehelios.org
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