‘We don’t want to turn down new development’ during discussion about approval of energy projects

Heather Wright/The Independent

Energy was on the minds of St. Clair Township council candidates during a recent Round Table discussion hosted by The Independent.

In the last year, the municipal council viewed and gave support to five different proposals for natural gas-powered electricity plants in the community; Riverside Power Plant, the expansion to the Greenfield Energy Centre, a 250 megawatt plant by newcomer Vogtech Renewables, an expansion at the St. Clair Energy Centre on Petrolia Line, and one Eastern Power. Combined could have generate 1,880 megawatts.

Those companies submitted their plans, hoping to win an energy contract from the province but failed.

The Independent asked the candidates at the forum whether there should be some guidelines about what energy projects the municipality should support.

Mayoral candidate Jeff Agar believes all energy proposals should be filtered through council. “As long as they’re in a zoned industrial area and you don’t get a lot of complaints.”

Agar added projects which would be on the former Lambton Generating Station site would be a no brainer. “Let’s have at it. It’s zoned for everything out there and all the powers go into it. That’s a great site.”

Pat Brown agrees the township has “made good choices in supporting energy projects that have come forward.”
“Some of these are sort of maybe pipe dreams of a group of investors that want to get something off the ground, and certainly some have a lot more design input in and thought into them…others are just keeping their fingers crossed that (it gets to) the agency that reviews these projects and most of them are suitable for our industrial zoned areas,” he said.

“We don’t want to turn down new development.

Candidate Cathy Langis agreed. I really don’t like the idea of having set rules in place before they come to council because I’m afraid that we’re missing out on some ideas there that might be better for the public approval. …then we miss out on, as councillors, getting that out to the public and saying, ‘you know, this is why we didn’t do that because it never came to us.’”

Holly Foster said the township should have a strategy, but she would still like to see each of the projects at the council table for council approval.

Only candidate Tracy Kingston said there should be some criteria for what energy projects council should consider.
“We need to know what our goal is. Do we want to have three new energy projects come here? We want a variety of types of energy, and kind of have a better road map of where we want to be or where we want to go, “ she said.

“You get all these great projects… we get excited about it, but it doesn’t meet our needs, the needs of the people.”

And she says St. Clair doesn’t need to limit the amount of development. “If we want three projects, 10 projects – if we want to concentrate on the OPG site, let’s concentrate on that one and really work to get something on that site. I think we need a strategy and criteria on what we’ll accept and not accept.”

You can listen to the full interview below. Mayoral candidate Bruce Gibson did not respond to our invitation to The Independent’s Round Table Discussion. Council Candidate Alex Machan planned to attend, but had to cancel at the last moment.