Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Following an extended power outage caused by the Chetamon wildfire, which burned down power poles, some are questioning why Jasper’s power plant was closed.
Owned and operated by ATCO for 45 years, the Palisades Power Plant had reached the end of its life and was decommissioned after the Jasper Interconnection Project connecting Jasper to Alberta’s electricity system was completed in May 2019.
The power plant was replaced by 483 power poles. Buried lines weren’t feasible, the challenges of the rocky terrain being the primary complication.
Each new pole measured up to 19 metres tall, and together, they dotted the connection along a winding 45-kilometre pathway from the park’s east gate to a new substation at the former power plant site, sharing the major corridors provided by Highway 16, Snaring Road and the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Those wooden poles, however, opened up the possibility of direct and negative impacts on several wetland areas and bird species.
Representatives from the Jasper Environmental Association (JEA) were there during the public hearings.
“The JEA was encouraged to send in an intervenor statement as we really had some concerns about it,” said Jill Seaton, former president of the environmental group.
But there was another risk factor: if ever there was a forest fire, the power poles would be vulnerable. As much as they may be treated to weather the ravages of time and even resist fire, the fact remains that they are still made from trees.
That liability was on the JEA’s mind as well.
“We also pointed out a concern for forest fires. We sent a letter to the mayor and council on our concerns,” she said, citing how a number of the poles located on the west side of the Athabasca River were destroyed by the wildfire in September.
Mayor Richard Ireland recalled the issue as it was debated in the months and years leading up to the Jasper Interconnection project.
“Our primary concern was exactly what we ran into: that is, what is the redundancy? With a line basically from Hinton to Jasper… that's lots of exposed ground out there. Lots of trees,” he said.
“We were concerned from a municipal perspective about backup, recognizing that now if you've just added 40 or 45 kilometers of overhead line, things can go wrong like forest fires, for example. We suggested at the time that maybe at least the primary generator that was already here be resurfaced and upgraded and maintained as potential backup capacity. We raised the issue. At the end of the day, the decisions made outside the community came to the conclusion that Jasper was ‘appropriately served’… by the connection to the grid.”
That connection, he added, also put Jasper at the end of the line. Any disruption in service to the east of town could not be fixed with any transmission from the west. If Jasper still had a power plant, the concerns related to the power lines would have disappeared.
But power plants are not invincible structures. Mayor Ireland recalled an industrial fire caused by a faulty fuel hose that totally destroyed the town’s generating station one frigid February morning in 1974.
If Jasper still had its own power plant, and a wildfire raged right into it, the town would have lost electricity just as easily as it did with the transmission lines going down during the Chetamon Wildfire. It could perhaps have even been in a more profound predicament: it’s one thing to replace power poles burned down but another thing entirely to rebuild a power plant.
ATCO, for its part, conducted a feasibility study followed by public and Indigenous engagement and then prepared a Detailed Impact Assessment to consider not only the then-proposed Interconnection Project’s impact on plants and animals but also other environmental considerations. The energy provider still stands by its decision to satisfy Jasper’s electricity demands via transmission lines, a decision that was reinforced by the Alberta Utilities Commission.
The Palisades Power Plant was at the end of its service life, and ATCO needed to develop a suitable replacement based on many factors.
“Our perspective on the project has not changed,” ATCO told the Fitzhugh via email. “We still believe the construction of the transmission line was the best option.”
