SANDRA M STANWAY
Brooks Bulletin
A virtual hearing has been set for three days beginning on April 14 for Pace’s Salt Flats project in Brooks.
The 25.9 megawatt project proposed to be built on 175 acres of grazed land in the city adjacent to the Uplands area, received about 100 statements of intent to participate in a hearing.
A group called BLOG will be represented by legal counsel at the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) quasi-judicial hearing.
Prior to the holidays Claude Mindorff, director of strategy development for Pace Canada, received support for the project from county council.
Although the project is proposed to be located within the City of Brooks, which has also given the project support, the AUC now requires that discussions are held with the surrounding rural municipality that surrounds the project.
“Part of this is in compliance with what the AUC would expect and secondly this project borders on county lands with a number of landowners living right across the road from,” Mindorff said.
“Yes there are some concerns. I don’t know of a single project anywhere that there hasn’t been.”
He explained to council that the project proposes farming, agrivoltaics, a four kilometre granular walking path around the development, interpretative centre, dog and human watering area and a shelter belt to screen the project.
Reclamation plans are part of the application which would see about $1 million deposited by Year 10 of the project.
“I just want to clarify one thing. I think there was a comment that maybe we would speak on behalf of residents of the county. I mean they still have their own opinion on this. Definitely nothing we would say would get in the way of that as long as that’s well understood,” said reeve Arno Doerksen.
