‘Like night and day’ as ACC looks elsewhere
So, what’s happening lately with Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp.?
I’m glad you asked.
The company Kamloops didn’t want was wined and dined (literally) this week in Prince George. After a visit with the town council and economic development arm in Golden, ACC president Kim Sigurdson flew into the Prince for a whirlwind round of meetings.
He met with Mayor Dan Rogers, bankers, economic development types, potential funders and other business people, as well as the president of a prominent local environmental group, and attended a chamber of commerce luncheon.
“It’s like night and day,” Sigurdson said from Calgary airport yesterday as he waited for a connection back to Winnipeg. Drawing an obvious comparison to his experience here, he added, “You can talk to these people.”
Hugh Nicholson, president of the Prince George Downtown Business Improvement Association, called it “a very good day, very productive. . . Prince George really stepped up.”
In addition to setting up meetings, the DBIA hosted a reception at the local Ramada, giving Sigurdson a chance to meet people from local business and community circles like Canfor, realtors and others including John Bowman, the president of the College of New Caledonia.
Also at the reception was Marie Hay, president of the medical staff at Prince George Regional Hospital, a professor at the University of Northern B.C., and new president of a group called PACHA, the People’s Action Committee for Healthy Air.
Sigurdson described his discussion with Hay as cordial and respectful. “I don’t think she and I are going to go fishing but she’s a nice person.”
He acknowledged that Hay has a major concern about industry locating in what’s known as “the bowl” — the central part of the city rimmed by hillsides that can create inversions. But ACC is looking outside the bowl, not in it, Sigurdson says.
The conversation was probably timely, since Hay and PACHA have been indulging in a little of the old misinformation that has dogged ACC from the start. The PACHA website declares that “the gasifier would be constructed in Prince George’s downtown bowl, an area designated as a sensitive airshed by the Ministry of Environment.”
In making note of the opposition to ACC here by the now-defunct Save Kamloops and a group of local physicians, PACHA neglects to mention the project got the stamp of approval from the Environment Ministry, health authority and B.C. Lung Association.
“We cannot support an increase in industrial expansion like this within our airshed,” Hay writes on the site. “Should this industry attempt to come to Prince George, PACHA and other citizens’ coalitions for healthy air will be ready to stand and fight for the protection of our community, where others may not.”
Of course, such comments are based on an assumption that a gasifier significantly adds to air pollution, which isn’t born out in science.
The PACHA site includes a poll asking if people support a gasification plant in P.G. With about three dozen votes so far, the no votes outnumber the yes by about two to one.
Meanwhile, over in Kicking Horse Country, Sigurdson met with the Golden town council and the board of Golden Area Initiatives, the local economic development group. Those I spoke with there are cautious.
GIA board president Karen Cathcart said her group’s discussion with the ACC head was “an information session. . . . purely looking at the opportunities and whether or not there would be a fit in the community.”
Mayor Christina Benty said the meetings were aimed at starting “an appropriate community dialogue.”
What’s next? Sigurdson has to deal with the upcoming appeal of his environmental permit scheduled for Kamloops in September, then get a new permit for whichever location he picks (he says Prince George and Golden aren’t the only areas he’s looking at).
His provincial and federal funding remains in place, but he figures it will take another six months to put the whole thing together.
Madsen, by the way, has asked that the hearing be extended by seven more working days, which would make for 12 days of hearings in all. That’s long even by some of the more complicated Environmental Appeal Board cases.
The request arrived in Victoria on Wednesday and is on the chairman’s desk for consideration.
One more update on ACC. After our story on concerns being expressed by Domtar about some wood chips left on the ACC site on Mission Flats, Sigurdson posted a comment on our website in response to some other readers, saying “Regarding our facility in Kamloops, there is no fire hazard there and we have not left Kamloops.”
This prompted same worry that maybe ACC would try to set up in Kamloops after all. Sigurdson confirmed yesterday he has no intention of putting a gasifier in Kamloops, but his multi-year lease won’t expire for quite some time, so he’s looking at other possible uses.
Hence, ACC hasn’t left Kamloops.
Armchair Mayor column for The Kamloops Daily News, July 17, 2010
mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca
ArmchairMayor.ca 
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