THUNDER BAY — Some long-time campers have hired a lawyer to try to force Hydro One to change the planned route for the new Waasigan Transmission Line near Lake Shebandowan.
Property owners at Three Mile Bay on Upper Shebandowan Lake say the power line and towers will run along the north shore of the bay, on a slope to the lake, with a minimal buffer between the corridor and the water, and will pose a threat to the natural habitat.
Larry Richard, whose family has camped at Three Mile Bay since 1963, has organized a GoFundMe campaign to help cover legal expenses.
He said the proposed route is in violation of the Shebandowan Lake Management Plan and the Ontario Crown Land Use Policy Atlas.
"Both of them have pretty strict requirements on buffers between the lake and the wetland. A number of years ago, the government changed the Crown Land Atlas to allow transmission lines to go through, but they have a stipulation that you can't affect the indigenous lake trout species. And the whole reason for the lake management plan, it's from the federal Fisheries Act that you've got to protect these species, and they're not doing it."
Hydro One's final environmental assessment report for the Waasigan project recently received approval from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
Richard said the utility still needs the Ministry of Natural Resources to approve a variance from the lake management plan, and the campers plan to intervene in an effort to get Hydro One to change the planned route to the north side of an existing power line corridor.
Besides various fish species, they say Three Mile Bay needs protection because it provides habitat for snapping turtles, beavers, otters, blue herons and the eastern whip-poor-will.
They worry that runoff and phosphorous loading from excavation for the towers and from decaying organic materials will exacerbate blue-green algae blooms, reduce dissolved oxygen concentrations, and put an at-risk lake trout population in even greater jeopardy.
Richard said if a variance for the management plan is approved, it will set a dangerous precedent for accepting other industrial or commercial developments along the lake in the future.
But Hydro One seems confident of getting all the approvals it needs to proceed as planned.
"We've heard the concerns that they have raised. These have been addressed through the environmental assessment," said Sonny Karunakaran, a vice-president with the utility. "The findings of the EA actually show that the impacts associated with this project are all mitigated through the deployment of standard environmental protection plans."
He said a variety of measures will be used, but didn't provide details except that "some of them would be like sediment and erosion control runoff protection."
Karunakaran said the plan is being provided to the permit-issuing authorities for their review, "and assuming [they] are satisfied, those will be the mitigations that are actually physically installed" to enable construction of the transmission line near Three Mile Bay to proceed.
