Comment
My comment is that there is a significant gap in the Regulation with respect to the spirit of the Act to dismantle the WPD project and restore the land to its pre-project state. There is no mention of dismantling the legal instruments that were essential to permitting the industrial development of the physical infrastructure now being removed by the Regulation. This comment applies to the original 29 turbine scope of the project.
The legal status, broadly including any easement, option, contract with private or municipal land owners, current or future use provision, lease, covenant, payment, royalty, assignment of mineral or surface rights etc., accruing from the original project impacts the land, its uses and potential industrialization as significantly as the crane pads, transformers, access roads to be remediated contemplated in the current regulation.
Dismantling the project must also include removing from land title any agreements permitting White Pines or any similar industrial consideration in future. This is a significant component of land restoration. Elsewhere in the Regulation, hiring an independent expert to verify that decommissioning has achieved a verifiable pre-project state is mentioned (Section 10.5, 10.6). Integrating an independent legal and/or land use professional to establish that the decommissioning has successfully achieved a pre-construction phase of land title and permitted use is essential to ensuring that the spirit of the Act and Regulation are fulfilled, namely that:
1. The project is fully decommissioned
2. No infrastructure remains and can be simply resurrected and used for industrial wind turbine or any other potential industrial purposes, including legal infrastructure
3. WPD cannot capitalize on industrializing the project lands in a different project
4. All infrastructure (physical, environmental, heritage, biological and Legal) is returned to a pre-project state
Thank you for considering the restoration of the legal status of land to its pre-project state.
Submitted December 1, 2018 3:32 PM
Comment on
New regulation under the Environmental Protection Act to close the White Pines Wind Project
ERO number
013-3835
Comment ID
13446
Commenting on behalf of
Comment status