New in a community near you: a gas-fired peaker-plant!

A new power plant has been proposed by the Ontario government through the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) for northern York Region. Instead of conservation programs, household power monitors, graduated time-of-day power use charges or green energy sources, the OPA has advocated for the construction of new 1960's technology gas-fired peaker-plants. Instead of planning for a near future where non-renewable forms of energy are depleted the OPA has instead decided, in conjunction with surely very powerful energy concerns, to build big concrete polluting plants that will further degrade the quality of our air, climate, and local ecological system.

Public consultations, mandatory opportunities for local residents (the real stakeholders) to air their grievances, have proven that the provincial government, in cahoots with energy developers, have little regard for the ecological future of our area, and are concerned solely with increasing and expanding settlement in farming and agricultural areas which will require new power sources. So misguided is the thinking of the OPA that they claim that little ecological damage will result from new gas-fired plants (check out the OPA website, it's all there: misdirection, private sponsored studies, and environmental assessments that say that air pollution falls around the perimeter of the plant and no further). What happens when a power plant is located in an agricultural, farming area? Who wants to eat the vegetables saturated with low-lying ozone and high levels of toxic chemicals? So much for the organic farms.

The illusion, the veil, of democratic process is wearing thin for those local residents who have formed groups and coalitions to fight the OPA. The always already failing hegemony of democratic ideology is threadbare here: public consultations were only a nod at due process and diligence, meant to keep the local public satisfied. Stakeholder consultations have been a lame attempt to keep up the curtain of democratic accountability. The OPA knows, of course, what the ecological result of these plants will be, just as we do. We know that in the process of 'keeping up appearences' that any rights we thought we had to contest these controversial plans come a very distant second to the power and pressure for expansion from the provincial government aligned with the various buisness sectors that are looking for more area to convert by way of "development". Development discourse is not just a post-colonial tune sung by the IMF and World Bank choir, it is local (however you want to characterize that), poingant and knocking on your back door. How will we answer? Who precisely decides what constitutes "development"?

In repsonse to plans for power plants and increased "development", local groups, composed of residents, in each of the areas where a plant is potentially slated for construction have mobilized and continue to educate, speak out, and protest these plans. Local residents are giving voice to protests for our air, our water, your water, your air, your health, our health. They are giving presence to the understanding that speaking is a political act.

Radical action starts with conversation and debate. Give voice to these veiled threats against your health, your safety, the health, saftey and viability of our agricultural areas. Future generations will call on us to account for our actions now.

Contact our energy minister, George Smitherman Contact the Ontario Power Authority

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