Hydro choosing route for its new transmission line

If a power line is built through the forest and no one notices, does it really hurt the caribou?

Manitoba Hydro is about to pick a route down the west side of the province for the biggest power line built in more than 30 years.

Problem is, everyone's so relieved the power line isn't befouling the pristine boreal forest on the east side of Lake Winnipeg that no one's devoted much thought to which forests, creeks and caribou herds might be affected by the west side line.

A couple of years ago, the NDP issued an edict forcing Hydro to choose the west side, and the government hasn't wavered on the decision. That's despite focused opposition from the Manitoba Tories and taxpayer groups who say, quite rightly, that the west side route is longer and costlier.

Late last year, with relatively little fanfare for a project with a price tag twice as big as the entire city budget, Hydro released maps of three possible routes for the west side line.

Each route tried, with varying degrees of success, to dodge umpteen towns and First Nations and more than a dozen provincial parks, protected forest reserves and wildlife management areas.

Not to mention countless creeks, rivers, wetlands and bogs that could be vital to habitats and ecosystems.

Except for farmers worried about power lines that might cut through their fields and folks concerned about towers marring the picturesque Little Saskatchewan River valley near Minnedosa, there's been little public discussion about the eco-effects of the new line.

That might be because, according to Manitoba Hydro, there are relatively few eco-worries on the west side.

"We're only talking about 60 metres of right-of-way," said Patrick McGarry of Hydro's licensing and environmental assessment department. "It will have an obvious physical appearance on the landscape but the magnitude of the environmental effects aren't that big, and we're trying to take care of them all through avoidance and routing."

A high level study done in 2007 at the height of the east-versus-west debate noted that the west side has seen 90 years of mining, logging and farming and is already criss-crossed by roads, rail lines and power wires. If the new power line runs alongside roads for much of the route, it won't really have much of an effect.

But the transmission line does have some environmental implications, and Hydro's biologists and botanists have already begun to identify and survey critical habitats, waterways and intact forests to be avoided. In about 18 months, they will submit what's expected to be a mammoth environmental impact statement as part of the provincial licensing hearing.

According to maps in the province's five-year-old caribou strategy, the three power line routes cut through the ranges of five of the province's 10 herds, possibly affecting more than 800 of the iconic but threatened animals.

One herd, the Naosap located around Grass River Provincial Park, is listed at high risk in the province's caribou conservation plan.

"Wherever you put the bipole, it's going to disrupt caribou," said Eric Reder, Manitoba director of the Wilderness Committee. "Every single opening changes the predator-prey relationship."

According to the 2007 study, clearcutting a path through the bog or the forest for a transmission line makes caribou more visible to prey, including humans. And it can bring the caribou into more frequent contact with moose and deer and the predators and parasites that come with them.

But Reder said the province's data on caribou are a bit spotty so it's hard to know exactly where the ranges are. And existing herds have already been forced to adapt to a lot of development like roads and logging on the west side that has bisected their ranges.

The idea is to avoid further fragmenting a herd's habitat, steering clear altogether of calving grounds.

The problem is, it can take 20 years to see the negative effects of development on a caribou herd.

The power line could also cross hundreds of creeks, streams and bogs and will hug the edges of three of the province's favourite parks -- Clearwater Lake, Duck Mountain and Grass River. And it could cut through any one of about six big provincial forests or wildlife management areas.

Any one of the three west side routes will cut through about 460 kilometres of forest. But as Ron Thiessen of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society notes, that forest is far from untouched. Until recently, logging was allowed in provincial parks and much of the forest reserve is earmarked for logging.

And it's a reasonable compromise compared to the east side, where the power line would cut through 900 kilometres of untouched forest.

The west side is far more fragmented whereas the east side is unfettered," said Thiessen. "Our joy at the moment is that the joy is it's not going down the east side."