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MATL hopes to win construction permit extension
| Written by Ric Swihart |
| Thursday, 19 March 2009 |
| Prairie Post Southern Alberta Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. hopes to win an extension soon to its construction permit from the National Energy Board for the MATL electrical transmission line that will link Lethbridge and Great Falls. Shael Gelfand of Calgary, a MATL spokesman, said March 3 the original NEB permit required construction to begin within a specified time, and the first approval period lapsed. The first nine-month extension was granted by NEB last May. MATL is waiting for another nine-month permit extension applied for in January. With delays in securing the Alberta Energy and Utility Board approvals, and a continuing Alberta Court of Appeal case launched by several landowners in the Coaldale area of the proposed MATL line route, the extension is essential. That appeal has been heard by a panel of three justices. The panel assured MATL it would release its judgment as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Tonbridge Power Inc., 100 per cent controlling shareholder of the Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. project, has successfully negotiated the end of all landowner appeals of MATL's Montana Department of Environmental Quality permit application. The appeals, which challenged MATL's MDEQ permit, were filed Nov. 21, 2008 at the Montana Board of Environmental Review, and were the only U.S. appeals involving the MATL project and its U.S.-based permits. Gelfand said all landowners involved have now formally executed stipulations dismissing their appeals, and the company has subsequently given formal notice to the environmental review board of this action. It is expected the environmental review board will enter an order terminating the involved appeal dockets, completing the process. Meanwhile, MATL continues to negotiate with Alberta landowners. Lethbridge laywer Tom MacLachlan has been handling landowner negotiations with MATL officials while Scott Stenbeck of Medicine Hat has been handling the appeal preparation, said it has been more than 12 months since the EUB approval of the MATL line. That approval included an EUB order that MATL work hard to negotiate right-of-entry compensation with landowners. “MATL has never stepped up to the board with mitigation,” MacLachlan said in an October interview. In late January, MATL senior official Bob Williams of Calgary, said the company was continuing the job of trying to reach agreement with 113 landowners in the County of Lethbridge and County of Warner on whose land the proposed power line will be built. At that time, MATL has signed easement agreements with 24 of those producers. “We will continue our negotiations with all the landowners and we want all to know MATL wants to follow a negotiation and mitigation process with all of them,” he said. MATL has also won approval for possible intervention by the Alberta Surfaces Rights Board should landowner negotiations fail. If the landowners eventually are forced to the surface rights board which includes an individual landowner hearing and, ultimately, perhaps arbitrary compensation determined by the board, the landowners will not gain a negotiated settlement the EUB said they were entitled to, said MacLachlan. |
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