Posts Tagged ‘AECOM’
What’s Wrong With Toronto Hydro Energy Services?
The folks at Toronto Hydro Energy Services have demonstrated epically bad judgement in a number of different areas. Whether it is their response to electrocuting Torontonians family pets, demonstrating an inability to appreciate their inability to manage and deliver viable renewable energy projects, or their latest, trying to lie to Guildwood Residents and the Ministry of Natural Resources to get their second soon to fail win project off the ground. Things appear so bad that David O’Brien, President of Toronto Hydro Corporation won’t even allow Chris Tyrrell, President of Toronto Hydro Energy Services, to speak publicly when his hydro poles are electrocuting small kids and killing family pets. Having seen Tyrrell address a community meeting, I can appreciate O’Brien’s decision, but still believe it demonstrates a problem with the organization.
I’m going to share some facts on each of these situations to demonstrate ridiculous levels of corporate irresponsibility.
First – Who is Toronto Hydro Energy Services:
- THES is a 100% owned subsidiary of Toronto Hydro Corporation, which is 100% owned by the City of Toronto. It is the municipal equivalent of a Crown corporation.
- THES is the unregulated arm that is supposed to seek out revenue generating opportunities outside of Toronto Hydro’s regulated business of electricity delivery.
- THES’ board is made up of individuals that also sit on THC’s board.
- While legally separate, THES shares resources and responsibilities with Toronto Hydro Corporation and functions more like a division than a company.
Now on to the issues:
1) Electrocution of Toronto’s small children and pets:
Toronto Hydro Energy Services is the proud owner of the electricity poles within Toronto. A lot of people would think it makes sense for Toronto Hydro to own the poles that deliver the electricity within the city right? Sure it does, but why would the unregulated arm that doesn’t deliver electricity own them? Simple – When David Soknacki was Budget Chief from 2003 to 2006 he was consistently unable to balance the budget (Shelley Carroll – current Budget Chief has been able to). Soknacki had all kinds of imaginative schemes to come up with the money to make it work and in 2005 one of them was to ‘sell’ the hydro poles for 60 million dollars in one year program spending. Here I should note that if anyone would like to lease the wires in my apartment – recognizing there will be zero return on investment, I can be reached at john.laforet@laforet.ca – Chris Tyrrell (President of THES) I hope to hear from you soon.
So basically the guy who controlled the City’s finances was short – and went to a company that is 100% owned by a company that is 100% owned by the organization whose money he was responsible for – and set a price to sell this important, but commercially worthless piece of infrastructure to. Sounds like the brain trust at Toronto Hydro Energy Services really knows a deal when it sees one.
And now for the bad judgement by Toronto Hydro Energy Services:
- First dog reported electrocuted in November 2008. THES response? Fix the faulty wiring in the one location, essentially making the deaths of family pets the ‘canary in the mine’ approach to solving the problem. “The Toronto Humane Society yesterday blamed Hydro for not taking the risk seriously in the German Shepherd case, and said the company would have acted more diligently had the victim been human.” (Toronto Star, January 14, 2009)
- Second dog reported electrocuted January 13 2009. THES response? “Toronto Hydro inspected the area for safety hazards and has deemed the area safe.” (CTV, January 13, 2009)
- Toronto Hydro “deeply regrets” it’s role in electrocuting family pets, but assures folks the streets are safe for people because of our rubber shoes and two feet. (Toronto Star, January 14, 2009)
- January 30th 2009 – five children are shocked. Toronto Hydro President David O’Brien suggests maybe parents should avoid hand wells with children, orders all handwells tested and replaced. It is reported there have been 140 reported incidents since November 2008. (National Post, January 30, 2009)
2) Bad Projects:
The Exhibition Turbine was a failure as a project. Yet Joyce McLean and her far left friends practically pray to the thing. They told investors it would generate 1.8 million kilowatt hours annually. It has generated 800 000 kilowatts annually and will mean investors, even after twenty years won’t even be able to extract their principal from this project. Toronto Hydro Energy Services had a proper anemometer test at the exact site they built, made these projections and failed to get anywhere near their targets. When asked about it, they mislead and evade.
Now, they want to find some poor sap or saps with as much as half a billion dollars they don’t need to keep Joyce McLean and Jack Simpson busy blowing it on another failed project. This time, the project will ignore all legitimate scientific data available and rely on an anemometer test up to fifteen kilometres away from possible turbine locations to build. They don’t seem to know what they’re doing, and can’t seem to appreciate how bad their last project went.
3) Toronto Hydro Energy Services Lying and Misleading:
Toronto Hydro Energy Services has not consulted the Guildwood community about the proposed anemometer installation. They are planning to lie to the Ministry of Natural Resources this week and submit an application that can only be approved if they have consulted. The problem? I have a video recording of their proceedings and not once do they speak about any environmental screening or assessment as it relates to the proposed installation. They can deny this if they’d like, but I have demonstrated in past when folks lie and I have them on tape, I release it. Ask Paul Ainslie about that.
Instead of holding a public consultation, they stacked a meeting with lackies from organizations with clear conflicts of interest to speak in favour of a wind farm. The third attempt to hold a meeting was not a legal meeting. It ignored the City of Toronto Act which sets minimal standards for Toronto Hydro’s meeting conduct. Even then, they did not tell residents the meeting was part of an environmental assessment or screening, they did not talk about the findings of any screening or assessment and cut off community consultation after Chris Tyrrell promised to keep it open. They are using this meeting which had nothing to do with an environmental assessment to try and convince Natural Resources to say they did consult the community on this. It is simply untrue.
Even in their presentation, which is available on their website http://torontohydroenergy.com/pdf/Offshore-Dec-2-2008.pdf they don’t reference an environmental assessment or screening. It does have misleading information and full out lies contained within it’s pages. My critique of this can be found here http://laforet.ca/2009/01/27/cutting-through-the-crap-laforets-fact-check-of-toronto-hydros-community-presentation/.
I recognize the word ‘lie’ has a very precise meeting and misusing it can and sometimes does have legal consequences. I am certain enough that Toronto Hydro’s claim that their meeting attempts are community consultations falls under the definition of a lie, and is provable to be a lie. I am prepared to use this word to describe it and will stand by this claim.
Final Thoughts:
These folks are so bad at even the most basic aspects of their responsibilities there is question to their ability to even safely own hydro poles, let alone install major generating projects. The last attempt at wind generation was led by McLean and failed miserably. They are both lying and misleading as it relates to the community consultation process, and any claim that they have consulted Guildwood residents would be a ‘lie’ as at no point did they discuss anything relating to the environmental impacts of their project, nor did they disclose any actual research they had done on this front.
These guys are so off base they’ve entered the realm of lawsuit territory. If they killed my dog or shocked my kid, I would sue. Folks in US cities have won real money off of utilities. Normally I don’t advocate lawsuits as a way to deal with anything, but these clowns have demonstrated they have too much money on their hands and any hit they take would probably be better for all of us in the long run. They knew there was a problem, but waited until it looked bad to fix it. If I were an investor in WindShare, I would sue both Toronto Hydro Energy Services and Joyce McLean personally as she worked for both sides of that deal at different times. Working for two partners in a two partner deal is really sketchy. Kind of like being the President of CanWEA and developing a wind project while pretending to be remotely objective. As a citizen of Toronto, I anxiously await the Natural Resources decision and hope that they turn down their application on the grounds that it simply isn’t true that they’ve consulted, nor does their test appear warranted when all other research demonstrates any project won’t be viable. I am confident that I can place my trust in the hand of a public servant whose decisions are made based on a set of criteria and not politics. I hope the individual who will make this decision rises to the hour and makes the right, but difficult decision.
There will be an environmental impact of even the anemometer platform installation, and considering that all research suggests it is unnecessary to do this test, any possible impact, even if it is as small as killing a single organism isn’t worth it, considering there is no reason for the test. What’s worse, no one can say it looks like Toronto Hydro Energy Services has done any research on the impacts, and from their own words on the topic it appears they don’t even care. Considering they work for a company that doesn’t seem to fret too much about it’s role in killing people’s family pets, or electrocuting children, this probably shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Toronto Hydro Energy Services should be ashamed of their conduct all around, and Toronto Hydro Corporation should be seriously looking at a ‘cleaning house’ at THES in recognition of their complete and utter failure to manage infrastructure responsibly, to build a simple project, or to learn from their past mistakes.
As always, I welcome Toronto Hydro Energy Services to respond. I will give them as much space as they would like and the opportunity to a completely unedited retort to my claims here. And if they want, I will seriously lease them the wires in my walls too.
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When Life Imitates the Simpsons… An Inconvenient Truth…
You know those people who can equate virtually everything that happens in life to an episode of the Simpsons? I haven’t really been able to find many situations in my life that tie neatly into episodes of the Simpsons, but one episode came to mind last night as I was getting ready to go to bed. Sure enough someone had already found and uploaded the portion of the specific episode I was thinking about to youtube. The cultural phenomenon that is the Simpsons has resulted in books, a legion of devoted fans and detailed Wikipedia entries of each show during it’s twenty season run.
There is more reading to do, but take a look at this clip from ‘Marge Vs. Monorail’ and think about what has been my topic of choice over the last two weeks.
Below is the plot summary of Marge vs. the Monorail – followed by my thoughts. This is from the Marge vs. the Monorail article found on Wikipedia.
“After being caught dumping nuclear waste in the city park by the EPA, Mr. Burns is fined three million dollars. A town meeting is immediately held so that the citizens can decide what to spend the money on and Marge suggests using it to fix up Main Street, which is in a bad condition. The town shows enthusiasm for this idea and is about to vote for it when suddenly a whistle is heard and a silver-tongued, fast talking gentleman named Lyle Lanley suggests the town construct a city monorail. He leads them in a song, which convinces the town to buy the monorail.
Even though Lanley succeeds in winning over the entire town, including skeptical Lisa, Marge is unhappy with the purchase, believing that the monorail is unsafe. While watching TV, Homer sees an advertisement that suggests he become a monorail conductor and Homer, claiming it to be a lifelong dream, immediately agrees. After a three week course described by Lanley as “intensive”, Homer is named the monorail conductor. Still feeling uneasy about the monorail, Marge decides to visit Lyle Lanley and discovers a notebook that reveals Lanley’s true intentions of running off with bags of money while everyone else falls victim to a faulty monorail. Marge immediately drives to North Haverbrook, which Lanley mentioned was a previous purchaser of one of his monorails. Once she arrives, Marge discovers that the town is in ruins, and that those still living there deny that they ever had a monorail, despite the fact that the town is covered in advertisements for it. While exploring, she meets Sebastian Cobb, the man who designed Lanley’s monorail. He explains that Lanley cut costs everywhere when building it, and that the entire thing is a scam.
At the maiden voyage of the monorail, the entire town has come out, including Leonard Nimoy. Lanley grabs his money and jumps in a taxi, which takes him to the airport. The monorail leaves just before Marge and Cobb arrive. At first things run smoothly, but the controls malfunction, causing the monorail to accelerate dangerously. Meanwhile, Lanley’s flight makes a brief unscheduled stop in North Haverbrook, where Lanley is immediately attacked by a group of locals. Back in Springfield, Cobb tells Homer that in order to stop the train, he needs to find an anchor. Homer grabs the giant “M” from the side of the Monorail and uses it as an anchor. Eventually, it latches onto a giant doughnut, stopping the monorail and saving its passengers. Everyone thanks Homer for saving the town, while Leonard Nimoy claims his “work here is done”, and beams up.”
Is life imitating the Simpsons? As with all things found in cartoons the scenario is more extreme, but to me at least, as sad as it is, I know after re-watching this clip and thinking about just how the current process goes for wind energy projects in Ontario goes; I found similarities. Although, Jack Simpson and Joyce McLean didn’t exactly sing and dance – well they did, but only when it came to answering direct questions. The community certainly was not in a singing or dancing mood though, at least not at the meeting that wasn’t stacked by paid supporters of their cause.
In the last two days I’ve received emails from folks who live in communities in Ontario at different stages of the wind project process. One individual wrote to tell me about the negative health implications having several turbines within sight of her home, some under 500 metres away, and another to tell me about her municipal government shutting residents like her, who could see three massive turbines installed within 600 metres of her home, out of the discussion of possible negative health effects. I’ve been thinking about how devastating each of those situations must be, and how frustrating it must be to watch again and again as various levels of your government fail to protect you from people who simply would rather deny the health impacts of their product than properly investigate it (I will also be writing more extensively about each).
The individuals in favour of these projects will point to all kinds of other health impacts. I’ve seen arguments as silly as “Do you have a microwave?” (good thing they didn’t ask me this one) a question one proponent of wind power, tried to use to suggest someone couldn’t be too worried about their health if they’d eat “radiated” food. I doubt tobacco companies were quick to recognize the correlation between smoking and cancer, the folks who brought us lead paint, pipes and gasoline, likely challenged the correlation between their products and the health impacts lead poisoning has, just like the guys who dumped heavy metals into our great lakes probably took some time to appreciate the devastating effects they were having on it’s ecosystem. The folks who build and install wind turbines appear to be no different. They just ‘make believe’ the health impacts away.
One of the annoying differences between the proponents of wind projects who just don’t care about human impact is that at least with Nuclear power (two words that can easily make these folks blow a gasket) there are very serious safety precautions and not a single incident in Ontario of a major accident. I’m not defending nuclear, I’m just saying, if a guy wanted to throw one of those up within 50 metres of someone’s home, you better believe the government would have my back and not allow it to happen. So – why is it that the self righteous folks behind Ontario’s wind industry won’t also follow minimum safety precautions to protect human health? They can say incidence levels are low, and that’s fine, incidence levels of health impacts from wind power are hundreds of times higher than the incidence of nuclear meltdowns in Ontario and yet they still have standards to follow, so why can’t the wind generators have some standards too? I’m not saying don’t build wind turbines, I’m just saying do it right. Engage communities, research and follow legitimate health guidelines, consider the efficiency of the project, the economics of a project and most important, the environmental impacts of a project. Why is this so hard? Environment, economics and efficiency – three really great places to start when examining any public policy relating to physical assets or infrastructure. Nothing should ever happen that impacts a community without it’s residents being engaged, and their well being looked out for.
The arguments above could be described as “inconvenient truths” of wind power projects in the Province of Ontario.
As Al Gore said in the movie of that very title “This is really not a political issue, so much as it is a moral issue”.
5 Comments »Anne Mometer’s Employer Revealed
Below I will disclose where ‘Anne Mometer’ works. I will release the results of the “where does Anne Mometer work?” poll. I will also use the number of visits and the spread of time between visits to determine Anne’s work output, which I will then compare to the Exhibition Turbine’s performance of just 12% on average over the last five years. Read along. Enjoy as I rule out her non employers and give reasons why Anne wouldn’t be a good fit there.
Thank you for those who took time to guess where you thought Anne Mometer worked. I have been highly critical of Toronto Hydro Energy Services complete incompetence as it relates to the public consultation process of this project, and now I must admit to a failure of my own. You see, in a spirit of fair warning, I announced that the poll would close at 8:00pm tonight. I then set it to close tonight at that time. But it closed early and I was unable to fix the problem. Toronto Hydro Energy Services and I share a challenge in maintaining an ‘open’ consultation. Mine was technical and unfortunate, Toronto Hydro’s challenge was by design and is considerably more suspect. In recognition of this shared challenge, however, I will agree that I will not propose or try to build any poorly thought out, poorly located or ill advised, wind power projects in Lake Ontario. Heck, I’ll go so far as to call for the Scarborough Bluffs to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and promise not to recommend any energy projects on Lake Ontario. I wonder if Toronto Hydro Energy Services will join me in making a similar commitment?
I’m sure a lot of people wanted to know why I asked where individuals thought Anne Mometer worked, especially considering I can already confirm without a shadow of a doubt her place of employment. Some may have thought it was an attempt to have some fun at Anne’s expense, but in truth, it was a measure of trust. I wanted to know which company, readers believed, would be most likely to have an employee who hiding behind an unoriginal moniker while insulting someone who has made cogent arguments against a bad project. You answered. You answered clearly.
An overwhelming majority of readers believed that Anne Mometer would be found at Toronto Hydro Energy Services with 56% of respondents choosing this option. The City of Toronto was deemed the second most likely hidden lair of Anne Mometer by 22% of respondents. The Ontario Power Authority came in third with 14% of readers believing Anne spent her days reading my blog from this provincial agency. 6% of readers thought Anne worked at the Independent Electricity Operator, while just 2% thought Anne worked at Gartner Lee (AECOM).
I think we can all agree anyone who has time to visit a website some thirty times between 9:30AM and 3:30PM yesterday can’t be a terribly useful employee or one who has a heck of a lot to do. Today Anne’s IP address visited thirty three times between 9:45AM and 3:45PM. It appears her work is uninterrupted for a total of two hours of the business day on average. Her work output of 25% capacity is actually twice Toronto Hydro Energy Services five year average energy output to capacity at it’s single wind turbine project. Perhaps this is why people thought Anne worked at Toronto Hydro? Considering 12% capacity is considered defensible within this organization, it seems reasonable that many would have thought this as a natural home for Anne. But Anne doesn’t work there.
The City of Toronto takes a lot of flak for the sometimes head scratching things that come out of City Council, such as a bloated budget and the traditional dislike of bureaucrats. I think bureaucrats on the whole are hard working folks who would be ashamed to work with someone as lazy as Anne. – She doesn’t work there either.
The Ontario Power Authority isn’t technically a partner in this project and has the good sense to recognize projects like this are simply a bad idea. Such insight would presumably preclude allowing members of staff to sit at their computer’s reading blogs all day. She doesn’t work there.
Okay. So there are two choices left: is it – The Ontario Electricity System Operator – The guys responsible for making sure the lights stay on and for the day-to-day management of the electricity market in Ontario? These are the guys who have to deal with the constant under delivery of promised electricity supply from industrial wind generators. Considering, 58% of the time, wind developers under deliver causing increased expense to the system – they probably loathe folks like Anne who don’t really seem to do much. A lack of productivity from others causes these folks to have to pick up the slack and solve the wind industry’s regular failures to deliver on their short term forecasts. Anne doesn’t work there either.
So that leaves one option – AECOM (Gartner Lee). Anne Mometer works at a firm that describes itself as “a Canadian-based firm at the forefront of our industry in providing environmental science, economics, planning and engineering services.” Really? Anne Mometer? The person who sits online reading a single blog thirty times in a single day? We’re trusting her to even spell environment?
Seriously. Anne Mometer, who has the high honour and distinction of being my single biggest reader (by frequency) of late, works at a firm that is responsible for determining the environmental concerns of projects and designing plans that strike a balance between the two.
Is anyone else concerned that Anne Mometer can work at a firm responsible for such serious aspects of a project like this, and not even understand enough about wind power to know that you can’t just increase wind to generate electricity but do in fact need turbines to spin to translate the wind strength into usable energy?
Is anyone else concerned that Anne Mometer – an employee of AECOM is the only official to respond to my open invitation for unedited response from anyone at Toronto Hydro Energy Services? I will give her top marks for speed. I posted the following at 7:15AM on January 27th 2009. “I welcome anyone at Toronto Hydro Energy Services to challenge any of the claims I’ve made here. I will publish any unedited response I receive from anyone at Toronto Hydro Energy Services so long as it addresses the points in here.”
Anne Mometer of AECOM’s response was received at 10:11AM the same day. While she is technically not from Toronto Hydro Energy Services, AECOM is a partner in the project and I did hold up my pledge to publish any unedited response I received.
I will welcome anyone from AECOM who would like to respond to this to do so. Feel free to email me at john.laforet@laforet.ca to do so. I will publish unedited verifiable response I receive from AECOM.
Think I’ve been tough on Anne? Anne isn’t real. But the concerns above are.
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