Peggy Revell
The proposed hydroelectric development on the Namakan River means economic and social hope for Lac La Croix First Nation, Chief Leon Jourdain said as the public review period of the project’s draft environmental report wraps up by the end of this week.
“It’s been challenging, it’s definitely been a challenging process,” Chief Jourdain admitted during a third and final open house on the proposal that was held here last Thursday.
“But nonetheless it’s good to see the environmental assessment at its final stage so we can go forward from there,” he added.
Ojibway Power and Energy Group Ltd.—a partnership between Lac La Croix First Nation and Chant Construction Ltd.—is proposing to construct a 6.4 megawatt “run-of-river” hydroelectric generating station at High Falls on the Namakan River, which is located about 90 km southwest of Atikokan and 100 km southeast of Fort Frances.
“What’s exciting about this whole project and what it gives is hope to the community,” Chief Jourdain stressed about the project’s economic and social impact.
“We cannot survive with the existing system. That type of a system has to be a thing of the past,” he argued, noting there is no security in a system where the government or “powers that be” can terminate programs at any time.
“Our first duty as people, as parents, as leaders, is to ensure that our children’s futures are protected,” Chief Jourdain remarked. “To make sure that economic history, or social history, does not repeat itself.
“Failure to do that we’ll be guilty of the biggest betrayal of our own children. So we do this for the future generations.”
With this proposed project, the community will be able to own the generating station—worth about $20 million—in 12 years’ time, Chief Jourdain noted.
“Our vision is to create ownership over businesses. Creating businesses outside of the community so that we can have assets that we can go to the bank or financial institutions so that we can develop more or buy more business as we go,” he explained, adding this means potentially buying up local resources in the area.
It’s part of the three components to the economic stability for First Nations: practical sovereignty, cultural match, and institutions.
This also marks a change, where First Nations are “now getting into a place of being big players in the economic world that we deserve to be,” Chief Jourdain noted.
“The days of First Nations sitting at reservations with no hope has got to come to an end.
“There’s no dignity to the citizens of this country, there’s no dignity to the people at the First Nation level, there’s no honour in the existing system,” he charged.
“We all have a right, as human beings, to elevate our communities and our people and our families, and economic level, where we are big players in the economic world, and that is our goal.”
Opposing the hydroelectric development project has been the Voyageurs National Park Association, which charges the current environmental report “reveals numerous deficiencies and environmental problems.”
It is urging the public to not only submit their comments to the OPEG, but also contact political officials in both Ontario and Minnesota to prevent the development.
Amongst various concerns the VNPA has, one is that hydroelectric development will destroy the habitat of lake sturgeon and the Pygmy snaketail dragonfly, [and] any “habitat loss and alteration will significantly impact their future in the Namakan ecosystem,” the organization stated on its website.
Questioning how “green” the project is, the VNPA also is calling for the environmental reports to address not just the High Falls development, but the cumulative effects that hydroelectric development will have at Hay Rapids and Myrtle Falls—the other two locations which OPEG has marked as sites for possible future development.
As well, the VNPA is calling for the immediate involvement of the International Joint Commission.
As for the response from the public through the open houses held last week in Atikokan, Lac La Croix, and Fort Frances, Chief Jourdain said he was encouraged to see the interest, both negative and positive, to the project’s environmental assessment.
“The public should be reassured that indigenous people, including ourselves, are spiritually connected to this falls, to the natural environment,” Chief Jourdain said, stressing the band will do everything in its power to make sure minimal damage and displacement happens.
Lac La Croix First Nation is “very, very satisfied” when it comes to the environmental assessment of the project, he noted.
“We are a people of the forest, if you will, connected to the land . . . and we believe our first priority and duty is to protect the land as stewards of the land, that we ensure that we do not violate or deface [or create a] massive type of destruction,” he vowed.
The generating station was “very carefully designed,” and they will be working very closely with the engineers “so that it does not create a monster, if you will, or create a generating station that could potentially do harm,” Chief Jourdain pledged.
“This has not been an easy decision for our community—just on the basis of defacing the natural beauty of anything,” he admitted. “It’s been going on for quite a few years to make that final decision.
“So if there is anybody that is more concerned about the environment, [it’s] the very people of the community that are putting up this, or giving their approval and in creating and making this happen.”
Since the very beginning, just what impact the hydroelectric development will have on fish—particularly the sturgeon population, which has been classified as an endangered species—has been the biggest issue the public has raised concern about, noted Dale Gilbert, environmental project co-ordinator with Chant Construction Ltd.
But since this issue was identified right from the start of the process, elements have been brought into the project’s design to address them, he noted.
“We understand the requirements, the conditions that [the fish] need for successful passage, and we’re very confident that we can do that, we will do that,” Gilbert stressed.
“And we’re designing in a lot of monitoring systems and adaptive management processes that if it’s not working as well as we hope, that we can go in with the minimum of disruption and make little corrections, little tweaks, to make those changes.”
This includes incorporating a “fish way” into the design, which will allow the fish to swim upstream over the obstacles.
“We’ve got some very elegant solutions there,” said Gilbert. “By using locally-sourced materials, we can, during our excavation process, we can cut these things to the size that we want, use a combination of blast rock which is very sharp and angular, and we can dowel things into the riverbed and then dress that with the preferred substrates that the fish will use.
“And because these things are sort of wedged in place by the angular rock, we can go in and make these little movements here and there, change the sizes and that kind of thing, and we can really improve anything that isn’t performing as well as we’d like.”
Gilbert said he thinks what people really need to understand is that a run-of-the river power project is really the least impactful type of electricity generation that you can have.
“If you had the opportunity to look around, you can see that there’s some staggering statistics on air pollution from coal—[it] is, by far, the dirtiest power generation,” he noted.
“And nuclear obviously has its issues.
“In our mind, there’s no better way to create power [than this power project],” Gilbert stressed.
With this step of the process drawing to completion, Chief Jourdain said the next one includes arranging a meeting with the provincial Ministry of Energy for the purchasing agreement—something he has no doubt they will get.
Meanwhile, the OPEG team will be taking all of the input received from the public from the draft environmental review period, along with comments made by the government agencies that have been reviewing the technical notes and 1,700-page report, so that improvements can be made to the documents, Gilbert explained.
“We’ll take all these documents, we’ll revise the document, and then it comes out for a public review,” he said of the process.
This revised document will have a 30-day public review time, where people can look at it again and make more comments.
From there, it will go through for approvals from the Ministry of Environment, added Gilbert. And if approved, the OPEG can move forward with getting the “myriad of permits” that are required.
The earliest construction could begin on the project is this fall, estimated Gilbert, noting this depends on the timeframe needed for acquiring permits, as well as working around the various windows of time to avoid disrupting the fish spawning and bird nesting.
The draft environmental assessment can be found online at www.opeg.ca as well as in hard copy format during the review period at the Atikokan Public Library, the Fort Frances Public Library, and Lac La Croix band office.
Comments concerning the draft environmental report must be received in writing no later than this Friday (Feb. 26).
These should be directed to either OPEG president Tim Saville at P.O. Box 248, Aurora, Ont., L4G 3H4 or to Gilbert at 226 Edward St., Aurora, Ont., L4G 3S8.
