May 23,2025
“Rural communities should not be pressured to accept industrial risks in exchange for sports equipment.”
There is a battle ongoing in rural Ottawa as the developer for a lithium ion battery storage proposal lobbies for municipal approval of its project.
The process has many similarities to and implications for the same process as it applies to wind power proposals—critical right now as the IESO next Request For Proposals will go live in June, just weeks away.
In Ottawa, power developer Evolugen/Brookfield, proposed a 250-megawatt battery storage facility. Despite community concerns and the fact that the City of Ottawa voted outright to not grant municipal approval to the project, the IESO gave the power developer a contract anyway, which opened the door to an 18-month long fight for the developer to get that mandatory support.
The result? Rural residents concerned about the risk of fire, pollution of land and water should a fire ever occur, as well as the loss of farmland are on the front lines of a process that pits urban citizens vs rural.
The fight is getting ugly with ordinary residents including small-scale farmers and rural families voicing their concerns about environmental impact, lined up against billion-dollar corporate entity Brookfield and lobbyists including so-called “environmental” groups.
Again, this is just typical of the struggle experienced by rural residents when wind power proposals appear, as they have already done in South West Oxford and the townships of Kerns and Hudson in northern Ontario.
No respect for Ontario community concerns
A few weeks ago, local MPP Karen McCrimmon said the siting and approval process in Ontario seems to be, “Find a place and we’ll approve it.” No consideration is given for community concerns.
It keeps going.
In a letter appearing in Ottawa local news service West Carleton Online today, resident Leigh Fenton lays bare all the flaws in the approval process for the battery storage site.
“To the Editor,
Councillor Curry’s support for the Marchurst BESS project reflects a troubling pattern: framing industrial energy infrastructure as inevitable while glossing over serious safety, environmental, and governance concerns.
Her statements are not grounded in the realities of the proposed site: a rural residential area surrounded by protected wetlands, reliant on private wells, livestock stewards and in some areas with only one road in or out in the event of an evacuation protocol.
Let’s start with the facts. A 250 megawatt Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is a Class II industrial facility, not a green energy generator. It does not reduce emissions or create renewable power: it moves electricity around the grid. The Ontario Energy Board does not recognize grid-scale BESS as “generation,” and Evolugen has not provided a single document proving net environmental benefit.
Curry’s claims this project is urgently needed for the tech park are speculative. The proposed Marchurst BESS is 10 to 12 kilometres away from the business district. There is no direct feed into Kanata North. No tech company has publicly stated their operations depend on this BESS, and many, as Curry herself notes, are pursuing on-site battery systems. If the need is so critical, why aren’t these facilities being built within the urban footprint, on industrial land zoned for this purpose?
The safety claims are equally questionable. Lithium iron phosphate batteries may be more stable than other chemistries, but they are not fireproof. Recent global incidents, including multi-day BESS fires with toxic smoke plumes, show that fire suppression is complex, and standard firefighting equipment is not always sufficient. Ottawa Fire Services may have been superficially consulted, but there is no publicly available BESS-specific response plan, no public HazMat training protocol, and no assurance that rural residents will be safe if a failure occurs.
Curry’s reference to underground reservoirs as a safeguard for groundwater contamination is misleading. These containment systems are only effective under certain failure modes, and do not account for catastrophic system breaches, chemical leaching over time, or stormwater overflow during firefighting operations. There is also no published hydrogeological study demonstrating that the aquifer beneath the site is protected.
The suggestion that residents should stop opposing the project and instead negotiate for noise attenuation or recreation funds is deeply problematic. That is not consultation: that is soft coercion, wrapped in community grant promises. Rural communities should not be pressured to accept industrial risks in exchange for sports equipment.
This project is being advanced under a Class Environmental Assessment for minor transmission facilities, not the full environmental scrutiny it clearly warrants. That process mismatch alone should halt the project. Moreover, Councillor Curry’s portrayal of Evolugen’s outreach omits critical facts. Their staff members are registered lobbyists, not independent experts. Meetings with councillors are not acts of public education; they are orchestrated lobbying. And door-knocking campaigns and unsolicited flyer drops, often described by residents as intrusive and unwanted, are no substitute for fair, transparent consultation. Ottawa’s tech sector does need reliable energy. But that must be achieved through a responsible, honest process, and environmental accountability – not by offloading industrial-scale risks onto rural communities.
In conclusion, while Councillor Curry claims to have “read everything” there is to know about this project, the implication that her personal review outweighs the concerns of a highly skilled, professionally diverse rural population is both condescending and inaccurate. This community includes electrical engineers, surgeons, firefighters, floodplain planners, public health professionals, environmental lawyers, nature reserve managers, heavy equipment operators, livestock farmers, and many more folks far more knowledgeable than Curry on the precautions that concern a BESS of this size. There are the people who live and work on this land every day, who are busy in volunteer community working groups, fighting this BESS installment and who understand the risks not just on paper, but in practice. Dismissing their expertise with a series of “right?” punctuated soundbites doesn’t inspire confidence – it reveals a serious gap in how decision-makers are listening.
Leigh Fenton,
South March.“
Hardball tactics with rural Ontario communities
How many times have Ontario rural communities had to hear that for the “greater good” they must accept a wind power project (not worth it, said economist Edgardo Sepulveda in his cost-benefit analysis, Chasing The Wind)? How many thousands of dollars were offered as persuasion for a new arena or rink or other sports facility? Cheques for damage to roads proffered as a windfall for the community when really it was just compensation for the costs to taxpayers?
The process was so full of problems it forced 155 communities to declare they were Unwilling Hosts to new industrial wind power projects—none of them have changed their mind about that.
Although Ontario now has municipal support as a mandatory requirement, much remains problematic in the IESO and Environment approval processes.
It’s about to get interesting as the next RFP goes live in June.
contact@windconcernsontario.ca
#UnwillingHost