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Air quality an issue n By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF 11 · OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, April 29, 2009 To build a gas-fired power plant in Oakville, TransCanada must convince the Ministry of the Environment it will not have a negative impact on a nearby community's air quality. This condition was outlined during a recent open house hosted by TransCanada at the Argus Road Holiday Inn. TransCanada is one of four companies bidding on a contract to build and operate the power plant from the Ontario Power Authority (OPA). If successful, TransCanada proposes to establish the Oakville Generating Station on a site located at 1500 Royal Windsor Drive. As there are houses only 400 metres south of the proposed site, what the plant will do to the residents' air quality has become a major issue of concern for both area residents and local councillors. TransCanada spokesperson Chris Breen noted such con- cerns have been anticipated. "We hear that regularly whenever we go into a community to build a plant of this nature. The first thing we remind people of is that the Ministry of the Environment has very strict criteria and standards that we must meet before this plant is allowed to go ahead," said Breen. "What we are doing right now is some testing and some modeling with environmental professionals to create an assessment on what impact our power plant would have on the local environment if it was build. That's going on now, those results will be available at a second open house that we'll have in June." Breen said these results will also be made available to the Ministry of the Environment who will determine whether TransCanada has done an adequate job of modeling their impact and whether they will be allowed to continue with the project as is. Besides answering ques- tions about environmental concerns, the TransCanada officials also spoke about the facility's preliminary design. Currently the facility is expected to be set up over a 15acre site and feature two smoke stacks that will reach 60 metres in height. Information was also presented on how a gas-fired power plant actually produces electricity. For this process, known as combined cycle generation, natural gas is combusted, warming and compressing the air, which spins a turbine and creates the first cycle of energy. The second cycle occurs when heat, created by the above process, boils water and creates steam, which is fired into a second turbine. "So, what you're doing is getting more energy per unit of gas burnt," said Breen. "It's a more efficient power production process and you get less emissions as a result." The Oakville Generating n See Power page 15