Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Dec. 11 Seven Stars Energy open house in Weyburn. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
At the Dec. 11 open house for the Seven Stars Energy Project, proponent Enbridge laid out updates for its planned 200 megawatt wind farm to be located just east of Weyburn. You can read Part 1 about the open house here and Part 2 here.
A resident of Weyburn was concerned that Weyburn residents were not consulted. He said the July meeting was not well-advertised, and he hadn’t heard about the project until seeing it on Facebook, citing a meeting put on by opponents to the project. “If you get to say that you’re here for the town, and the people and everything, but it just feels like to me that you guys are just bullying your way in here, and nobody wants it,” the man said to applause.
Another person said she lived in the RM of Weyburn, “and I’ve never actually received any communication from you guys.”
Sam Munckhof-Swain, Director, Community Partnerships with Enbridge, replied that was why they were having open houses. They also have a website with the ability to communicate with Enbridge. A large engagement team was brought to the second open house. “This is exactly what today is about, to hear a bit of project information from us, but also hear the feedback from residents is here as well. And at any point, if you want to chat to us, hear about the project, provide feedback. We’ve got all the contact information around,” he said.
He added they did place ads in local papers, and use local radio. Canada Post was on strike, Munckhof-Swain noted at the time.
“Our projects are better when we hear from the local community, so I encourage everyone, whether it be the RMs or the city here, to get in touch with us. We want to hear from you.”
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He said, “To the point about Enbridge bullying our way through, and just moving ahead with the project, like I said off the top, like I completely empathize. That is the perception of how this came about. There was a flashy news conference out of Regina, and most people in this room didn’t hear about or know about this. And so, you know, I can hear where you’re coming from, with that perspective. What I will say is that the improvements, the enhancements that that we have made, hopefully, you know, we’re not here to convince everyone in this room. We’re never going to be able to do that, but hopefully that shows that we are listening, we’re taking the feedback, and we’re trying to make the project better for the broader community.”
Munckhof-Swain said they did not “hit the five kilometres” with reference to reaching people living near the project, and said, “and that was a mistake.”
He said the Canada Post strike was an issue. But another resident took issue with that, noting that Pipeline Online had travelled throughout the project area in one day. “He drove the whole project in one day. You can’t drive around and put something in somebody’s door and say that this meeting’s on? But that’s too difficult, and we gotta wait until the mail strike is over. That’s that’s lack of diligence,” he said.
Moderator Tim Robillard said, “So there are other ways. We can get things hand delivered.”
In response to another question about communications, Munckhof-Swain said, “We have spoken to, obviously, directly, the land owners, where the turbines are on their line, and these open houses. And yes, we’ll get better at communicating out and maybe figure out a better way to get that information out. But that’s why we’re here, right? That’s why we’re there in July, that’s why we’re here today, and that’s why we’re going to be here again in the new year to continue to have this exact conversation, because we want to hear that feedback.”
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Why renewable energy?
A self-described former coal miner pointed out that some big companies, like BP, are getting out of renewables.
Munckhof-Swain responded that Enbridge’s bread and butter is the oil industry, having built their first pipeline in 1949. “But we’re also in the renewables business,” he said.
Alex McNichol, Director, Power Business Development with Enbridge, said, “Renewables is our fourth business unit, and we made a decision a number of years ago to make it a meaningful part of Enbridge, and we’ve announced large solar projects recently down in Texas. We acquired a renewable developer with a number of projects in the US, and continue to grow in Canada.
“For us, this is an important part of the energy mix. I think that’s how we look at it. As Sam mentioned, our base business is liquid pipelines. That’s where we started. We recently acquired three large natural gas utilities in the US. And renewables and then power for us is just an additional part of that energy mix, and that’s part of our commitment.
“So I can’t speculate on why others are getting out. We recently announced a very large solar project in Texas. I think our commitment to the energy space, as Tim talked about, and on the electricity side of it is growing. It’s just another aspect for us and our commitment.”
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One of the questioners during the open house. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Another woman said, “I’m going to quote Greta Thunberg: ‘How dare you?’
“How dare you call this renewable? How dare you call it environmentally friendly? And that is, I want to add to that. Renewable? You’re going to leave concrete – 30,000 tonnes of gravel and metal beneath every one of those damn turbines,” she said, referring to the approximate total mass of all the turbine foundations, combined.
She continued, “And the metal – that’s not that just, that’s just the concrete. You’re going to leave metal. That land can’t be renewed properly. That can’t be gone. The windmill turbines can’t be renewed. They can’t be disposed of properly. So you’re calling it renewable? You’re calling it environmentally friendly?” she said to some applause.
She suggested shorter, smaller turbines should be used instead, expressing a concern about BPA in the resin in the blades composite construction. She was concerned that BPA would be spread about by the deterioration of blades overtime, causing contamination.
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At this point, Munckhof-Swain called out the moderator for having cut off the woman’s comments, saying, “People are taking a lot of time out of the day to be here, and so let’s make sure they have a chance to share their perspective.”
Munckhof-Swain said there are some things they will disagree on, and they can talk one-on-one. “There are a lot of comments in there about some of the potential impacts coming off turbines, etc. We’ve got the experts, sorry, the professionals that are up here that can can touch on that. But you know, that sounds like a much deeper conversation that you. I feel as though you want to sit down and have a real long-term conversation. We can answer it here in a couple minutes. That’s not going to be the information everything you’re looking for. So what I would suggest is we would love to sit down and come back and have that conversation and talk to you specifically about those but we’ll touch on a couple of those things here, because it’s important for the general public, but you know that the commitment from us is to sit down and have a have a meaningful conversation with you, so that we can talk through what that means.”
Chris Ollson, Senior Environmental Health Scientist, Ollson Environmental Health Management, responded, saying about BPA, “So it is true that the fiberglass, like any manufacturing of fiberglass, starts with an epoxy resin, and there’s basically two epoxies that are put together that forms the fiberglass shell. If you go to Home Depot, if you go to your local hardware store, any of the epoxy resin that we all use has BPA in it. Almost all the plastics in your home have BPA in it. These chairs have a fair bit of BPA in the epoxy resin.
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“What happens is, when you actually that, and I know that, so you’re talking about it, was a Norwegian (study). Unfortunately, the study that got published in Norway by an opposition group is actually a lot of misleading and false information. When you take that BPA epoxy resin and you combine it with the other, you create the fiberglass. It’s no longer BPA at that point. It’s got a different chemical makeup structure, and regardless is that it’s bound in that form where it’s not going to get into the groundwater. It’s not going to get into our bodies, even if you had a blade failure accident.
Chris Ollson, one of the specialists brought in by Enbridge. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
“One of the references that I would point you to is the American Clean Power Association has a fact sheet on BPA and the micro plastics. I helped then write it.
“Okay, there’s a lot of research around the world done on this to make sure that you basically, say fiberglass is in like a fiberglass boat or the like. Yes, it’s there to make it, it’s bound up and then, so even if you have a blade on the ground, it’s not going to be released. It’s not going to impact people.
“Absolutely, BPA can cause cancer and other health impacts if it’s improperly used, if it’s sourced into the environment in an inappropriate way. So we certainly make sure that the way the blades are manufactured, that they’re not shedding all of this material into the neighboring fields. You’re not going to have impacts on the soil. You’re not going to impact the wheat, you’re not going to impact cattle, you’re not going to impact dairy. So it is true that it starts off that way. It doesn’t end up that way.
“Happy to share more information with you and talk to you further. But in general, it is not there. There is that one study out in Norway which obviously contains false information,” Ollson said.
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Why not smaller turbines?
As for reducing the size of the turbines, Ollson said, “So why are turbines getting bigger? Folks? Okay, so the turbines that were put up here in Saskatchewan 20, 15, years ago are typically about 400 feet. Then they went up to about 500 feet. The ones contemplated for this project, V163s, the Vesta machines, are just under 600 feet. There are other projects in Saskatchewan that we’re at 650, 700 feet. So why do we do that? Why is the industry gone that way?
“And the reality is because then each individual turbine produces more power per unit per tower. That means you need to a lot fewer. This is a 200 megawatt project. These are 4.5 megawatt machines. If you wanted to go to the older turbines, the 1.5 (megawatt turbines), first of all, you can’t buy them anymore. But if you want to go to the two megawatt machines. Instead of 47 towers, you need over 100. Okay?
One of the posterboards presented on Dec. 11. Enbridge
“And so the reason to go to the larger turbines, first of all, they are a lot safer than the older technology. But the sound limits never changed. So even though they got bigger, as Shant could tell you, they didn’t get louder. Most of those turbines are actually at the same sound level of output, or even a little bit lower. You still have to meet that 40 decibels in people’s homes. We still have to make sure the safety.
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“The setbacks, again, at 1.5 kilometers, or even at one kilometre, is far greater than we see in other areas.
“So even though they’ve gotten taller, they have. And we’re probably getting close to the highest height, that 700 or 750 feet that you put on land, just from a structural standpoint. It’s so that we can have fewer of them. And then most people who are concerned more about the visual of them. You’d have 100 or 150 towers. We would have to get closer to people’s homes, so that’s why they’ve gotten bigger. But the safety mechanisms are still in place.
“The sound levels are there. We haven’t changed any of those standards. In fact, we gotten more stringent. So that’s why the towers are bigger these days, as opposed to the smaller tower.”
Later on Ollson noted, “There’s approximately 73-74,000 turbines in the US right now, and there’s just around 7000 here in Canada.”
(Editor’s note: updated with several corrected typos)
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