U.S. energy company shocked at Canada's power plant rejection

VICTORIA - - A U.S. energy company says it's flabbergasted Canada's National Energy Board rejected its plan recently to build a power line into British Columbia's Fraser Valley from a giant gas-fired plant in nearby Washington state.

The decision was hailed as a victory for clean air by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, federal Environment Minister David Anderson, local politicians and environmental groups.

Residents along the Canadian side of the border in the sprawling Fraser Valley communities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack warned the U.S. plant will dump tonnes of pollutants into their air daily.

A spokesman for Sumas Energy 2, the Kirkland, Wash., company planning to build the power plant, said it will take at least a week to consider its next step.

The company has the option of asking the energy board to reconsider the decision or launching an appeal in Canada's federal court, said Bruce Thompson, SE2 vice-president.

"We'd very much like to do the project," he said. "We have put eight years into it and frankly I'm just shocked and flabbergasted that the NEB didn't approve our application. We have by far the cleanest, best designed, most well thought out gas thermal project in North America."

Sumas Energy 2 Inc. wants to build an 8.5-kilometre power line, starting less than a kilometre over the border at Sumas, Wash., and running to a B.C. Hydro substation in Abbotsford, B.C., just east of Vancouver.

But while there is very little population among the farming communities on the U.S. side, almost 130,000 live in the Abbotsford area.

The plant would spew 2.5 tonnes of pollutants per day, which the company has said is small in terms of the Fraser Valley's entire airshed.

But residents in the area say the airshed is already one of the most polluted in Canada because the coastal mountains form a natural bowl that traps pollutants, especially in the summer.

"The board determined that the benefits of the (international power line) and power plant, even if they were all realized, would not be substantial benefits to Canadians or to the local and regional communities," the board said in its decision.

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said Washington state has energy needs, but the Sumas project is not the right place for such a power plant.

"It's the right decision for the health of the airshed and more importantly, it's the right decision for the people of British Columbia," he said. "To add more pollutant into (the airshed) was not smart in terms of human health."

Federal Environment Minister David Anderson said he expected the company to appeal the NEB's decision in federal court, but was confident of scientific evidence concluding there were pollution hazards in Canada.

"The science showed a high state of pollution loading downwind from Sumas 2," he said. "You had the possibility of a local increase, a quite substantial increase."

Without access to the Canadian power grid, the company has previously said the project will be placed in doubt for financial reasons.

The 660-megawatt natural gas-fired facility would generate enough electricity to power a city of 400,000. U.S. authorities have given their support for the project.

"The project couldn't have been any cleaner than we proposed," Thompson said. "Now we just have to read the decision and see what the NEB based their decision on."

Environmental groups opposed to the project said the power plant would provide few benefits to Canada.

"This is a tremendous victory for residents of the Fraser Valley who have argued all along that Canada gets the pollution from this plant and doesn't get any of the benefits," said Tim Howard, a spokesman for the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

Abbotsford Mayor Mary Reeves said there is a possibility the company will appeal the NEB decision, but the rejection "gives us an edge."

Fraser Valley Liberal MLA Barry Penner, who has fought the project for the last five years, said the ruling may not end the battle to halt the development, but it's been knocked flat on its back.