Random Access

The folks who are reviving the Lakeview Ratepayers’ Association are thinking of having buttons printed up proudly declaring themselves as NIMBYs — with a difference. The difference will be an extra letter, the letter A.
“We’re NIMBY-A's,” says Jim Tovey, the acting president of the ratepayer group that will rebrand itself at a meeting set for Wednesday Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cawthra Senior Citizens’ Centre. “That’s Not In My Backyard — Again.”
After 50 years of living with the soot and the scent of the Lakeview Generating Station, there are a lot of angry people in the neighbourhood wondering why they’re going to be asked to bear the burden of providing power to the broader community again.
Ontario Power Generation and Enersource Mississauga have signed a memorandum of agreement to explore putting a new 900 MW. natural gas-fired plant on the site where a gargantuan pile of coal was the symbol of progress when the plant first started pumping out power in 1961.
That’s making a whole new generation of Lakeview residents mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore.
The community is getting itself organized for a fight over what many people see as a perfectly natural evolution of the property, plugging a new “clean-burning” gas plant into the already-existing infrastructure that links to the grid. It’s in the right place to serve the huge GTA load and people probably think that everybody in the neighbourhood is kind of used to the idea by now.
No, with a capital N, says Tovey. The site may have been redesignated last January to Utility-1 by the City to allow such a plant, but that doesn’t mean it’s a fait accompli. The days when Lakeview would silently accept its fate are over.
“I’ve been looking at the historic stack emissions from Lakeview and from 1978 to 2,000 there were 3.5 million tonnes of pollutants coming out of the stack,” says Tovey who was born and raised in Malton.
The lead pollution from the Arsenals property, the emissions of mercury from the expanding sewage treatment plant and the cumulative effect of the heavy metals and noxious emissions from Lakeview are enough already, said Tovey. “It’s the feeling of the residents that we have already contributed our share. It’s really not our turn anymore.”
Before a power plant is even proposed, there should be a complete environmental assessment, including soil and air sampling in the surrounding community and a health study to confirm or refute the feeling in the neighbourhood that there is more sickness and cancer than normal, said Tovey.
Once a neglected corner of the City, Lakeview has undergone a revival, as the many new homes attest. The gentrifying community includes its share of university professors, engineers and children of the rebellious 60s. “We now have some good intellectual resources,” said the resident, who is in the construction business and has built an authentic 1840s replica home himself.
Those NIMBY-A buttons might come in handy, because the opponents of this plant may need their senses of humour.
It won’t be an easy battle. Mayor Hazel McCallion openly welcomed the possibility of such a plant the day in June when she started the countdown to blow up the Four Sisters. As the majority owner of Enersource, the City has a vested interest in securing reliable, close-to-home future supply for the municipality.
This time, however, it won’t be any walkover. Lakeview is willing, and is getting ready, to defend itself.