January 16, 2018
Ontario

Bluewater considers revised deal with Nextera Wind Energy

By Bob Montgomery | Blackburn News | January 15, 2018 | blackburnnews.com

Bluewater council’s tentative agreement with Nextera Energy will be discussed at Monday night’s council meeting.

Mayor Tyler Hessel says council has some concerns with the Vibrancy Agreement as it’s currently proposed.

Hessel says the current agreement is dramatically different from the original in that it offers a payment of $2,500 per kilowatt instead of the original offer of $3,500. As well, it includes a stipulation that Nextera is now able to terminate the agreement for any reason with 15 days notice.

“The evaluation itself could be cancelled at any point and that’s probably one of the biggest fears we have and we were really surprised because Nextera, as neighbouring communities and have Vibrancy contracts with other municipalities in our region did not put this clause in,” he says.

Hessels admits there was some tension between the municipality and Nextera over court challenges in the early stages of the Nextera project in Bluewater, but the project has been up and running for over a year now without the municipality receiving any money from the Vibrancy Fund.

“So from our perspective we’re just surprised they’d want to change so dramatically. And of course, the clause about termination is something that surprised us as well. We appreciate that there were some court proceedings previous to our relationship but they do have them up, they have been operating for a year,” he says.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2018/01/16/bluewater-considers-revised-deal-with-nextera-wind-energy/