A new group is challenging a potential Power Storage Facility in Meaford by hosting a public meeting on the topic this Saturday.
Save Georgian Bay is a group gaining traction on Facebook with their Change.org petition which has over 5000 signatures.
They are hosting an open house to present a group done study on the project at the Meaford Community Centre on Saturday October 12th from 11am until 1pm.
Tom Buck the President of the Sunnyside Beach Association is a founding member of the movement and says that he, along with other residents are concerned about the environmental impact of the potential project.
“We have been studying the Ludington plant,” Buck says referring to the Ludington Michigan Pumped Storage Facility, “We also have on our team we have some environmental consultants, we have an energy market analyst, we have engineers, we have a geologist, we have a very well rounded team.”
According to TC Energy the plan is to build a facility that will produce 1000 megawatts of clean energy for Ontario's electricity system using a process known as pumped storage on the Meaford Base.
Pumped storage moves water from a low lying reservoir when power is low in demand, usually at night.
When electricity is high in demand operators release the water back into the reservoir through turbines that create power.
It's this pumping that Save Georgian Bay has concerns about, mainly the impact on local ecosystems.
TC Energy says currently the proposal is in the very early stages where studies of the area are being conducted.
Buck says that despite the project being roughly 7 years from being complete that this needs to be addressed now, “we believe there are technologies that solve this energy need much less expensively and with less impact on the environment.”
More information can be found on the Save Georgian Bay Facebook Page.