Article Tools
Copy to come In January 2006, Joe Anglin’s life got short-circuited. The 52-year-old businessman, who owned a small brokerage firm at the time, attended a community meeting near his home in Rimbey, Alta., an hour’s drive north of Red Deer. There, he found many of his neighbours in shock or in tears. The Alberta government had approved a new 500-kilovolt transmission line from Edmonton to Calgary. Not only would it run through their backyards — some of the most scenic and productive farmland in the province — but the landowners hadn’t received so much as a public notice. Many already had two 240 kV lines crossing their property.
Having worked for 17 years as a senior technology manager for U.S. power and telephone companies, Anglin immediately understood the issues facing his neighbours. “I told them,” he recalls, “you have no idea what you are up against here.” Neither did Anglin. Or the government, for that matter.
Now, 21 months later, the square-jawed Anglin, spokesman for nearly 1,000 landowners and farmers, is in the middle of one of the most explosive political scandals in Alberta history. Three years of regulatory planning for a half-billion-dollar power project have been declared void, and the very reputation of Alberta’s Energy and Utilities Board, arguably the most important regulator in Canada, lies in tatters.
And that’s just half the story. Two independent investigators have condemned the EUB’s “repulsive” practice of spying on ordinary citizens during legitimate legal proceedings, and one has accused it of violating the law. For the first time in its 70-year history, the EUB, an agency sworn to impartiality, has also publicly admitted that, yes, “circumstances have accumulated into a reasonable apprehension of bias.” And get this: a controversial new provincial bill to expedite transmission-line hearings may also get zapped, too.
Anglin calls the whole mess a shameful case of corruption, and says he’s not finished yet. Next month, he and the Lavesta Area Group will take their case to Alberta’s Court of Appeal in an attempt to expose just how biased regulatory proceedings have become in the province. “If we allow this to continue,” he says, “Alberta will be nothing but a Third World country with a puppet government.” Not surprisingly, friends and detractors alike call Anglin either a “scrapper” or a “pit bull.”
The trouble largely began in May 2004, when Alberta’s Electric System Operator (AESO), a non-profit provincial agency that plans the electrical grid, submitted 13 different plans for a new power line between Edmonton and Calgary. A transmission line hadn’t been built in 20 years, and the province’s booming economy needed more juice. AESO declared that its preferred option was a $230-million project. (The price tag has since doubled.) The task of building it would go to AltaLink Management Ltd., a private firm that owns most of the province’s transmission lines, and which, in turn, is largely owned by the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.
AESO took its case to the EUB, which oversees not only utilities but also billions of dollars’ worth of energy projects, including the chaotic oilsands. Run by nine members politically appointed by the energy minister, the EUB has a mandate to regulate “in a manner that is fair, responsible and in the public interest.” The board held a hearing on the need for an expansion, and approved what would become the AltaLink project on April 14, 2005 — nearly five months past the government’s own 180-day application deadline.
Two months later, Anglin’s neighbours received letters from AltaLink that the power line would tower through their yards. The mailouts didn’t mention the 500 kV line would expose them to electromagnetic fields greater than those shown to double leukemia rates in children. Shortly after, the Lavesta group elected Anglin as its spokesman because, as one local put it, “We don’t know if he knows what he’s talking about, but he sounds better than us.”
Anglin’s first order of business was to hire a competent lawyer for Stage 2 of the project, a “review and variance” hearing. But he realized he couldn’t honour EUB deadlines without first asking the regulator to grant his group a brief adjournment to find counsel. “And that was my first warning flag that something was rotten,” Anglin now says. When the EUB’s lawyer, Rick McKee, failed to return his calls, Anglin phoned up then-chairman Neil McCrank, demanding a timely response to his group’s request. (“I’m a pushy person,” Anglin acknowledges.) McKee finally returned his calls and said he’d first have to extend the courtesy of asking AltaLink’s lawyers for a delay. That amazed Anglin. “I’ve never dealt with a regulator before who consulted with industry before making a rule,” he explains. “They were making the decision together.” Anglin got one week to find a lawyer.
Next, the former New Hampshire policeman purchased EUB transcripts for the original needs hearing — and found more surprises. For starters, Alberta Energy, the province’s energy ministry, supported “a comprehensive consultation process” for utility lines. Yet at the original hearing, when asked about the thoroughness of consultation, one lawyer replied: “I honestly don’t believe it was a ringing success.” In fact, not one landowner group appeared at the hearing. Nor did the province’s Utilities Consumer Advocate.
The proposed line also didn’t appear to Anglin to be solely about keeping lights on in Calgary, as AltaLink often argued. One document identified the line as critical to boosting electricity exports to California from coal-fired generation plants outside Edmonton. Even the EUB reported that three-quarters of the power from the AltaLink line, or 750 megawatts, will “increase export capability” and advance “the import/export requirements” of transmission regulations. (AltaLink says the line will just have a “tertiary effect” of freeing up power for both import and export.) Even though the provincial energy ministry says, “Albertans will not subsidize electricity exports,” the EUB still ruled that ordinary ratepayers would cover the cost of the line. That didn’t sound legal to Anglin.
Anglin says he then discovered that the board had ignored cheaper and better technology options. AESO proposed a traditional alternating current (AC) line with large buzzing towers and an ugly land footprint. But both industry and government documents suggested that new direct current (DC) lines might cost slightly less — and conserve more power. (An AC line typically loses between 10% to 30% of its juice; in contrast, DC lines disturb less land, can be plowed underground, and come with a smaller carbon footprint.) “I couldn’t believe it,” Anglin says.
Last but not least, Anglin discovered that Alberta Energy, the EUB’s boss, played an unorthodox role in the hearing. Kellan Fluckiger, executive director of Alberta Energy’s electricity division, testified during the 2004 hearing that if AESO recommended one option like AltaLink’s 500 kV line, then the regulator should simply accept it under a new policy called “presumption of correctness.” At the time, Fluckiger just happened to be married to Zora Lazic, AltaLink’s executive vice-president of regulatory affairs. According to Leigh Clarke, AltaLink’s senior vice-president of law and public affairs, Alberta Energy was aware of the relationship and found no conflict of interest. (The couple is now divorcing.)
Rate this article
|
Rated
by 0 people
Rate This
Not rated
|
