Hydro’s logo, Broadway’s fingerprint

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2011 (5490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This message is brought to you by Manitoba Hydro: Building Bipole III is a responsible way to protect the security of hydro service in a way that will have “the least impact on people and the environment.” The $310,000 campaign is a slipshod portrayal of the cost of the NDP government’s edict to the Crown utility to run its new transmission line to the west of Lake Manitoba.

Here’s what the TV ads don’t tell you: Routing the line down the east side of the lake would cost $1 billion less in construction, equipment and financing costs and line losses.

Either route will cut a transmission line through boreal forest. On the east side, Bipole III would run through land that is not entirely cut by a permanent road, but plans are to extend that road. On the west side, there are roads but also farmers fields. Both sides involve running a line through the traditional territory of almost the same number of First Nations bands.

Manitoba Hydro planned for decades to build on the east side of Lake Winnipeg, a more direct route that would keep the new line farther from the two high-voltage transmission lines that run down the Interlake. The separation is critical to protecting Manitoba’s power supply, and its valuable exports, in the event severe weather cripples the existing lines.

Hydro officials cannot and will not dispute the superior economics of the east side route. The NDP government forced the Crown corporation to take the west side out of illogical fears that bad publicity from American environmentalists — the boreal forest on the eastern side is touted for recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site — would jeopardize exports.

The fact is that a permanent road being built up the east side is far more disruptive to the flora and fauna there than the 66-metre wide swath a hydro transmission line would cut. This brings no outcry from environmentalists of the impact on the UNESCO bid.

The obvious inspiration of Hydro’s ad campaign, as we approach a fall election, is purely political. What purpose does the advertising serve otherwise? None, which probably explains why no similar advertising campaign was launched when Manitoba Hydro was preparing to build the new Wuskwatim dam.

Under fire from numerous critics, the Selinger government has no good rebuttal to the fact it is flushing $1 billion down the creek, a colossal waste that loads additional cost onto the backs of ratepayers. Losing the public relations battle, it has called to arms the Crown corporation.

It is yet one more slippery way to cash in on pre-election advertising, paid out of a Crown corporation’s revenues, timed to get it all done before the election-advertising law kicks in this summer — three months before polling day — to ban departments and Crown agencies from extolling the virtues of government-related spending and programs.

Manitoba Hydro’s logo is attached to the ads, running on TV, on billboards and online. But there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind who is pulling the strings behind a campaign that obscures the impact of a west-side route on the people and the environment.