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Board members for the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA) have just returned from the Annual Conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario in London, Ontario.
During the conference, NOMA had the opportunity to meet with four Provincial Ministers, Progressive Conservative Deputy Leader, Christine Elliott, and NDP Leader, Andrea Horwath to advocate on behalf of its member municipalities...
The link below is a 16 page document.
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http://www.noma.on.ca/upload/documents/presentation-to-ministers-final.pdf
page 13 of 16 states:
"are certainly aware of the major forest fire crisis that enveloped the Northwest this summer. One casualty of the current energy system in the Northwest were the communities of Pickle Lake, Mishkeegogamang, Cat Lake, and Slate Falls who because they are served solely by a radial line, without a redundancy option, found themselves without power for 10 days. To add insult to injury, Hydro One was unable to bring in temporary generation to supply the communities while the power lines were being restored. The Pickle Lake and Red Lake radial lines are essential for the provision of power to a number of remote First Nation communities, as well as being one of the options to provide power to the Ring of Fire and other major mining opportunities, it is crucial that a second line be developed to ensure the stability of supply.
On the other side of the Northwest, there continues to be no planning from the OPA to enhance the service to the municipality of Greenstone, even though it too is served by a radial line and susceptible to long term outages, and even though it one of the possible jumping off points to the Ring of Fire. While the Ring of Fire Coordinator with the Ministry of MNDM&F is speaking to the need for electrical transmission, the OPA remains silent.
I wonder when OPA (Ontario Power Authority) will become "unsilent?" During election time..I presume.
