The only obvious way the ill-conceived Muskrat Falls hydroelectric station will be of any future benefit to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador is by getting rid of the damned thing right away.
What was clear from the start to many people was that destroying Muskrat Falls by building a dam over it would be an economic and environmental disaster. The ongoing Commission of Inquiry Respecting the Muskrat Falls Project should now be making that painfully clear to all those who were blinded by the falsehoods of the over-eager and, in many cases, self-serving proponents.
The inquiry is also showing that about the only thing the developers were good at was spending other people’s money without heed to prudent financial practices or common sense. They certainly were no good at predicting how much money they would need, or at explaining why their estimates were constantly going up.
Even the early prediction of a $6.2 billion price tag was already more than double Nalcor’s initial estimate – something that was ignored at the time and has since largely been forgotten. In 2010 the province’s newly created energy corporation estimated that building two generating stations on the Grand River (aka the Churchill) at Muskrat Falls and Gull Island would cost a total of $6.4 billion, with the Muskrat dam alone only costing $2.5 billion. However, in November of that same year Newfoundland’s Progressive-Conservative government – led by developer-in-chief Danny Williams – announced the formation of the now infamous partnership between Nalcor and Nova Scotia’s Emera for the laying of a transmission line across the Cabot Strait. This, the government proclaimed, would permit the construction of an electricity-generating facility at Muskrat Falls. The cost that time? Approximately $6.2 billion. Even if Emera’s $1.2 billion investment is assumed to be included in the government’s estimate and excluded from Nalcor’s, that still means Muskrat’s costs had exactly doubled in a matter of months – for no apparent reason.
Now, to bring this tangent back around to the main point, even the original $2.5 billion cost would have been too much to spend to produce something that would have no buyers. Now that the actual cost has more than quintupled to at least $12.7 billion (the final price tag is likely to be even higher) every justification that had been offered for making the initial investment has been proven to be either hopelessly naïve, unforgivably incompetent, or intentionally misleading.
The provincial government promised low-cost, green energy, enough to supply both local and international markets at a profit. It also promised an end to the sense of shame Newfoundlanders have felt ever since they quite eagerly handed the benefits of the earlier Churchill Falls hydro development to Quebec. What the government (whichever is elected) is now almost ready to deliver is an environmentally destructive dam producing electricity that the province’s consumers will be forced to buy at extraordinarily high prices. The government has also given the province a new reason to feel humiliated for once again having screwed itself.
The only real benefit that the project has brought to the people of the province (as opposed to the handful of corporations and political appointees who pocketed most of the billions spent) is that it paid good salaries to thousands of workers, many of whom were Labradorians, thereby temporarily boosting the local economy. That boost, which has been steadily diminishing for years, will inevitably evaporate entirely once construction is finished. The thousands needed for building will dwindle to just a few people employed to keep the turbines spinning. However, one way to keep the boost alive for a little while longer is to keep the workers on site (or hire new ones from nearby) and employ them to tear the dam down.
Face it: The $12.7 billion is gone forever, wasted by short-sighted politicians and executives who will probably never have to pay for their horrendous mistakes. Demolishing the dam will prevent it from becoming a money-losing millstone forever hanging around the necks of Labradorians and Newfoundlanders. The choice is to spend a little more now to get rid of the problem, or to keep throwing lots of good money after bad in perpetuity.
Not waiting – that is, demolishing the dam before the reservoir is filled – would eliminate another problem that Nalcor claims it can mitigate, but other observers, like researchers from Harvard University and the Nunatsiavut government, insist will severely harm the ecology of Lake Melville all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Not filling the reservoir will mean no drowned vegetation and no methylmercury contamination.
Finally, once the dam is gone and that stretch of the Grand River is returned as near as possible to its original state – something that is with increasing frequency being done in many other places with complete success – then Muskrat Falls can become something that will truly preserve the environment and create sustainable, long-term local jobs: The falls can be the beating heart of a provincial or even national park. That’s what they should have been in the first place.
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