Today, the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) decided to uphold the original ruling on the Heartland Transmission Line, and approve the original project, which includes overhead transmission lines.

The Strathcona County Mayor’s office released the following statement in response to the decision:

“Strathcona County today expressed strong disappointment, following the Alberta Utilities Commission’s (AUC) announcement that it will uphold its earlier decision to locate overhead transmission lines in the East TUC route.

Strathcona County challenged that decision in November, arguing that the AUC misconstrued evidence given by the Heartland project team itself that the underground route would be the preferred option if the costs were the same as the above-ground option, and that the province’s review of the other critical transmission infrastructure constituted new evidence and/or a change in circumstances that could lead the AUC to vary its decision.

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Strathcona County also argued that the AUC failed to give proper consideration to the impacts of these high voltage overhead transmission lines on neighbouring residents and businesses and that the AUC put too much weight on the cost associated with the underground option in determining that it was not in the public interest.

“I want to assure our residents that we did everything in our power to represent the community’s interests, and to bring the environmental and health considerations to the forefront,” says Mayor Linda Osinchuk. “We had tremendous support in these efforts from community members, who took a stand and got involved in a long and complex process. Unfortunately, the final decision was not ours, but the AUC’s.””

The AUC tells Global News that the review requests from Strathcona County and another party focused on the decision to reject the underground option in the original decision. In the original decision, the AUP says it included some underground option considerations, which can be seen in the November release.

The AUC passed on the following statement to Global News:

“The original Heartland decision of November 2011 could have been appealed in two ways, either to the Court of Appeal of Alberta or to the AUC as a request it to review and vary its decision.

Decisions of the Commission are intended to be final and to provide certainty to the applicants and interveners as to what can proceed. The Heartland decision was issued after extensive notice as to the opportunities available for participation in the original public hearing, and after a 25-day public hearing, more than 1,300 exhibits, thousands of documents and more than 170 witnesses.

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The Commission grants review only in limited circumstances – where a directly affected party does not get notice, where there is a substantial doubt as to the correctness of the decision or where there is a reasonable possibility that new information could cause the Commission to change its decision. The Commission received review and variance requests from six applicants related to today’s decision, on a variety of topics and struck a review panel different from the original panel to review the requests.

In Decision 2012-124 of May 15, 2012, the Alberta Utilities Commission found no grounds to grant applications made by six parties, asking it to review the original decision to approve the Heartland Transmission project application (Decision 2011-436).

The review panel found that none of the applicants raised a substantial doubt as to the correctness of the original decision due to an error of fact, law or jurisdiction. The panel also found no reasonable possibility that there were new facts or circumstances that would lead the Commission to rescind or vary the original decision. The review process is not intended to retry the original application based upon its own interpretation of the evidence or to provide a second opportunity for parties to express concerns about an application that they did not raise in the original proceeding.”

Responsible Electricity Transmission for Albertans (RETA) says it’s extremely disappointed in the Alberta Utilities Commission’s (AUC) May 14 announcement to dismiss appeals of its decision last year to permit an above-ground high voltage power line to be

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built in the Edmonton and Sherwood Park Greenbelts (TUCs).

“We are very disappointed and frustrated with the AUC process that was supposed to seriously consider the testimony presented by the public. The data and expert testimony presented by us, several local governments, industrial power consumer groups, landowner groups and individual homeowners was either dismissed or ignored by the AUC,” said John Kristensen, VP Technical, RETA.

As a result of the recent AUC announcement, RETA is exploring legal options to stop the Heartland line from getting built, or at minimum to get it buried when it runs close to people.