Accurate information important in this issue

I hear the community meeting last Sunday on the possible gas-fired power plant in King was well attended and it was a disaster from the perspective of sharing with the community what is actually going on.

A lot of misinformation and inaccuracies where shared and there was a gross lack of appreciation for the history of this issue, as well as what the actual objective of the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) is and what our region's power supply needs actually are.

The Clean Air Alliance's proposed combined heat and power 30 MW power plant requires a significant amount of water to be consumed per hour, not the peaker, as was claimed. The combined heat and power plant uses steam power to turn additional turbines and it takes longer to warm up and shut down than a peaking plant. It is an efficient technology, however it does not meet local engineering objectives and it runs longer than a peaking plant. Therefore, we could end up meeting eight per cent of our power supply needs in the event of a black out and yet we could have 20 to 40 per cent (to be confirmed) of the annual emissions of a peaker without the benefit.

This situation is going to get totally out of hand if our respective communities do not become better informed as soon as possible.

No one appears to even understand the dispersion maps or what we are talking about in general.

The proposed facilities are not only solely designed to address growth as was implied. This generation capacity is needed in order to ensure a secure and redundant source of power supply which is sound network planning. The emissions are negligible when you consider that more than 99 per cent of our emissions will continue to come from homes, cars and businesses in the region and at ground level the increased emissions will be equivalent to a few new homes being built in your neighbourhood. To suggest otherwise is misleading and does not serve the community well, assuming of course we would prefer to have an informed discussion that appreciates the history of this issue and the environmental and power supply needs that have to be urgently addressed.
Richard Johnson,
Aurora