In a letter to AltaLink President Scott Thon the Skierkas said the trespass occurred on June 29, 2015 when Stantec was conducting a a breeding  bird survey for the transmission project.  According to that letter, Dan Skierka and another landowner met with AltaLink representatives at the local Tim Horton’s and at that meeting denied AltaLink access. “We denied the request for very legitimate reasons and subsequently filled out the six page ‘AltaLink Land Form’ to that effect,” continues the letter. “We were assured that our position would be respected. The discussion and completing the forms took over two hours to complete.”

Citizen delegations have appeared before MD of Pincher Creek councils past and present to ask that something to be done about it. Former Reeve and Division 4 councilor Bjorn Berg was vocal in his concerns about the issue. Present Reeve and Division 4 councillor Brian Hammond has been vocal in his concerns about the issue. These days, Division 4 is a candle you can see for miles around. However, the issue is bigger than any one council, any one landowner group, and the power is in the hands of the regulatory bodies.

Blink. Blink.

TransAlta price rigging

The AUC decided against TransAlta in a price rigging/market manipulation case.  They timed power outages to drive up market prices. The AUC decision states in part TransAlta “intentionally took certain coal-fired generating units that it owned, that were subject to power purchase arrangements (PPAs), offline for repairs during periods of high demand when it was open to TransAlta to delay those repairs to a period of lower demand. The MSA submitted that TransAlta engaged in this conduct to drive up electricity prices to benefit TransAlta’s portfolio. The MSA asserted that this conduct restricted or prevented competition and restricted or prevented a competitive response and manipulated market prices away from a competitive market outcome.”

That’s given the Wildrose Party a bone to chew on.  It’s more than a little early-game to blame the majority NDP government, so rarely accused of being friendly with Big Power.

Anyway, the wind blowsHere’s a simple fact about southern Alberta.  Windmills have been good for business.  As the area combustible market winds down, renewables are one of the viable replacement enterprises.  Like the switch to canola, some landowners are cashing in, leasing windmill locations in hay fields, each with an annual income.  Farming the wind.

You can’t beat the views from the top of those towers.   They’re sleek, artistic, hyper-modern and retro at the same time.  LLG believes there’s a point at which there’s just too many of them and the infrastructure they require.

Landowners have longed voiced the opinion that the southern Alberta wind power generation is destined for the U.S. market. Given the increasing interconnectivity of the continental marketplace, the need to use power before it dissipates, and given the huge U.S. hunger for power, that seems almost an inevitability.

I have talked with TransCanada and the man in charge of lands on the company’s Eastern Mainline pipeline project (applied for at the same time as the Energy East Project) concerning the complaint about land agent bullying. This gentleman stated that he believes his land agents would never bully a landowner and his proof is that he has seen the land agent’s reports and his report does not “refer to any bullying.” He said he would fire any agent that bullied and that there were no implications of that in the Davis case!!!!

I was assured that the company was not threatening landowners that TransCanada would apply to the NEB for Right of Entry on landowner’s property to do the archeological survey.

CAEPLA sent this message to some of our members along the project.

As a result, CAEPLA has been contacted by another landowner confirming that the bullying was not an isolated case, confirming the Davis family interpretation of what the land agent “inferred.”

Dan Walker, a landowner near Grafton, Ontario, sent me an email last week to report his neighbor also refused to work his land for TCPL’s archeological survey, the same as the Davis family. Dan’s neighbor grows his crop using a no-till cropping to protect his soils so working the soil would compromise his crops and therefore refused to work his land. The TransCanada land agent told this gentlemen that if he did not work the proposed easement, TransCanada would get Right of Entry from the NEB and have someone else do it. The same threat as posed to the Davis family.

The same agent visited Dan’s property. In his email Dan says, “The same agent also came here (TCPL’s Enforcer) to get me to sign for survey, but when I refused, because they only wanted to pay for one property not the two, as he was leaving my kitchen he turned and looked at me and said they will be getting a ROE from the NEB and that this was my last chance to get a thousand dollars for free.”

Dan concluded his email with, “TCPL knows what is going on; you know it and I know it.”

Privacy Rights Are Property Rights

Everybody has the right to privacy – even pipeline companies

Our recent post critiquing the reliance of some landowners on freedom of information (FOI) laws to help level the playing field when dealing with pipeline companies struck a chord with many landowners and seems to have touched a raw nerve for one irate industry critic. 

Indeed the gentleman who types the “Line 6B Citizens’ Blog” in Michigan waxed a wee bit hyperbolic in response to our pro property rights post. We will try to remain calm as we reiterate our respect for property rights fundamentals and disdain for regulatory schemes and pipe dreams.

We proceed from the premise that property rights are like the right to free speech: It is often said that we must defend the unpopular speech of our enemies if we want that freedom for ourselves.

So too must we defend the privacy and property rights of others – even if they are pipeline companies, the corporate pariahs of our era – if we wish to protect our own.

It was from this standpoint that we addressed HB 4540 — a proposed exemption for pipeline companies in Michigan’s FOI legislation, the stated purpose of which is to reduce the amount of information that might be accessible to those plotting terror attacks against the industry.

Our thesis was basically that so-called transparency laws are useless at best and a threat to property rights at worst. Not to mention generally bad for business — especially since, as we pointed out, FOI laws were conceived to keep government accountable, not there to provide a backdoor through which to monitor private companies.

We also suggested limiting the amount of information pipeline companies are forced to make public was hardly putting said public “at risk,” as opponents of the bill claim.

What seems to have set our erstwhile “friend” at the Line 6B Citizens’ Blog off was our saying that FOI laws are a threat to privacy and as such are a threat to property rights because privacy is part and parcel of private property.

The blogger let loose with a nearly 2000 word screed mischaracterizing CAEPLA’s case for privacy and property rights and casting aspersions on our integrity, cognitive capacity, and tone.

What really seems to have irked him most is our objection to the use of the word “secret” instead of “private,” when describing efforts to deny businesses – whether big bad corporate ones, or yours — the right to keep private what ought to be kept private. Corporate secrecy sounds so much more ominous than, say, ‘private business documents.’

Bizarrely, the “Citizens'” blogger then went so far as to attempt to deny what every English dictionary we are familiar with agrees on: that secret is synonymous with private. Seriously. The closest he came to any genuine attempt to address our argument was to desperately claim we were misusing language:

“The word secret is not another way of saying private; it’s a way of saying undisclosed. We have no idea why CAEPLA would try to smuggle the word “private” into this discussion. Presumably, it’s meant to push all sorts of buttons, since we all know that privacy is sacrosanct. You don’t want your privacy invaded, do you? That’s actually the line that CAEPLA takes. We’re not kidding. They say so very explicitly.”

We do say that.

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, every dictionary we know of includes “private” on the list of synonyms for secret.

And an additional quick stroll through Wiktionary or any other reputable dictionary would reveal to our Line 6B “Citizens'” Blogger that privacy means “the state of being private,” and further defines private as all of the following:

“Belonging to, concerning, or accessible only to an individual person or a specific group.”

“Not publicly known; not open; secret;”

“Protected from view or disturbance by others;”

“Intended only for the use of an individual, group, or organization;”

“private papers;”

“Not accessible by the public;”

“private property;”

“Not traded by the public;”

“private corporation;”

 Etymological debates aside, CAEPLA believes too many landowners fail to challenge the essentially Big Government, anti-capitalist bias most pipeline opponents espouse.

We prefer the ideas embodied in the Magna Carta, and the Fourth Amendment, specifically that old-fashioned notion most Americans cling to, about “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

CAEPLA believes that property rights provide the best framework for landowners to do business with the energy transport or any other industry. It is the absence of property rights — in the form of Eminent Domain and other expropriations — that creates the moral hazard and tragedy of the commons that too often encourages bad behaviour by pipeline companies.

Brad and Karen Davis own and operate a sheep farm in Eastern Ontario. Following is their personal story of their experience with pipelines, dealing with pipeline company land agents and the effects of the National Energy Board (NEB) Act.

We purchased our farm in September 2012 knowing there were pipelines running through the farm, but not having any knowledge of what exactly that meant to us. Our farm is 400 acres with the pipelines splitting the farm into north and south halves. We operate a pasture based sheep farm where all 400 acres are used for rotational grazing.

Click Here to Read More

The LLG believes the proposed new AltaLink transmission line could have significant negative impacts on sustainable agriculture operations, native biodiversity and one of Canada’s most scenic landscapes.

Ongoing changes in the energy sector have resulted in re-evaluation and subsequent cancellation of other portions of the Southwest Alberta Transmission Reinforcement (SATR) that were previously considered necessary. In light of this, and given the significant environmental risks, the LLG has asked Premier Prentice to order a re-assessment of the SATR including the need for new transmission capacity in our area. The risk of lasting harm warrants careful consideration of whether a costly new line is even needed.

LLG has advised AltaLink that, should a line be developed, it is essential to avoid native fescue grassland and other sensitive environmental areas that are difficult or impossible to fully restore, and to avoid further fragmentation of a landscape of which our members are careful stewards. The SSRP provides policy direction for development in our area. Released by the Government of Alberta in September 2014, it specifies that new development must be concentrated whenever possible in areas already disturbed by previous development.

AltaLink’s routing options presented in January for the proposed transmission line demonstrate that the company understands our concerns and the SSRP policy direction and can find route options that use existing industrial corridors, but also that the company remains willing to deviate into environmentally-sensitive lands where a new line would cause lasting harm.

All of AltaLink’s new route options violate the SSRP and would further fragment and industrialize the LLG landscape. Part of one new route option in particular, impinges on an important wildlife corridor and natural habitat whose protection has been the subject of significant investment by Albertans, the Southern Alberta Land Trust Society, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and the Government of Alberta.

The premise in SATR for the Castle Rock to Chapel Rock transmission line has been: a) to allow more wind development in the Pincher Creek area; and b) to provide “redundancy” to avoid a repeat of the 2011 power generation shortage. Both premises are no longer true or needed based on AESO’s own analysis. New wind development in the area is not needed and the new generation capacity (wind and natural gas in other areas) has effectively negated the redundancy issue. It appears that moving forward with this line is largely in AltaLink’s interest but with little concern for the public interest. In a time of economic restraint, unnecessary infrastructure development would not be prudent.

The LLG believes existing wind generation in the Pincher Creek area is functioning well with recent transmission upgrades and does not need this added Castle Rock Ridge-Chapel Rock line. Over 90% of the proposed wind projects in the AESO queue were initially stalled by lack of transmission access; however, these projects are no longer economically viable due to wind pattern in the Pincher area creating a discounted price for producers and new wind turbine technology favoring development elsewhere. The AESO must stay current with market realities to ensure costly transmission projects are not built using outdated rationale.

LLG supports the development of wind and other forms of alternate energy as a means of reducing Alberta’s reliance on coal-generated electricity and to improve our energy reputation. We note, however, that improvements in wind generation technology actually reduce the likelihood of new wind farms in our region because new wind plants are most productive at lower wind speeds and are vulnerable to damage from the extreme gusts that are common in this area.

The LLG is committed to the principle that any necessary development in this area must respect its unique environmental attributes, agricultural stewardship and wealth of natural capital. If industrial development is deemed necessary, it should be conducted with best practices that protect wildlife habitat and sensitive environments for all Albertans and with minimal impact on sustainable agriculture and world-renowned scenic landscapes. Proposed development must adhere to policy direction contained in the SSRP approved by the Government of Alberta under its land-use framework. Burying transmission lines may be a viable alternative where sensitive areas cannot be avoided by careful route selection as well as where the line unduly affects residents’ views.

Please take the opportunity to learn more about the project and express your concerns. More information is available on the AltaLink website: www.altalink.ca/projects/CRRCR.

To learn more about the Livingstone Landowners Group, please visit: www.livingstonelandowners.net

Contact:

• Bill Trafford, Acting President, LLG (403-804-8841; [email protected]) or
• Kevin Van Tighem, Executive Member, LLG (403-763-0656: [email protected])

Let’s prevent the mess that now obstructs the view from Pincher Creek from happening again along the Cowboy Trail – Hwy 22.