A survey representing ground cover type at the 1,600-acre Saamis Solar Park site north of 23rd Street in Medicine Hat. Purple shaded portions represent land with less than 30 per cent native ground cover, while hashed yellow portions are 30 per cent or greater. Green and purple points denote evaluation points.--Supplied Image
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A local environmentalist is giving a mixed review of a plan to build a massive solar panel array in the city’s north end.
The Saamis Solar Park will provide clean energy, says Brent Smith, but will heavily impact swaths of native grassland on the 1,600-acre site north of Crescent Heights.
The Medicine Hat College instructor who teaches environmental science has surveyed the grasslands and riparian areas in the city.
He was one of a half dozen residents who registered as intervenors in an Alberta Utilities Commission hearing last April in the lead up to permit approval this month for DP Energy to proceed.
“Medicine Hat is pretty unique in Alberta in that you can spend five minutes walking around the city and find a lot of ‘prairie’ still exists within the city footprint,” said Smith.
“I was trying to advise that this project will disturb a fair chunk of what remains in the city.”
Smith and others, including an oil company and nearby landowners with long-term housing development plans, argued that an original proposal to build just on a contaminated site between Crescent Heights and existing plant sites would be preferable to expanded version, announced in 2020, that would bring the solar array east past Division Avenue.
Environmental studies presented by DP Energy and opponents describe the soil conditions as poor for agricultural development, but home to native species and wildlife on the additional phase to the east.
Smith himself supports construction on the original footprint – comprised mainly of a capped phosphogypsum deposit where most development is barred – stating green power production will help the city’s economy and help reduce carbon emissions.
That site supports mainly crested wheat grass, planted widely in southern Alberta decades ago as ground cover to prevent soil erosion.
Sections in the expanded footprint host speargrass, other forms of wheatgrass and include the potential to support tiny cryptantha, a species of flower considered “threatened,” which is found further to the east.
“In the rules that govern renewables … (developers) are expected to the best of their ability to situate those projects away from native prairie,” said Smith on Wednesday. “In this case there was a big argument about what constitutes ‘native prairie,’ and that broke down into numbers – how much of a given area needs to be native plants versus introduced plants for it to be considered native.”
The developer, DP Energy, told the News this week it is studying the approval and requirements, including wildlife and vegetation monitoring and conditions to avoid soil stripping in efforts to lessen the impact of the project.
Smith said the inherent traffic on the site, both during construction and operations, will impose heavy impact on the site.
Smith is not hopeful the impacts can be lessened to a large degree.
The group also challenged an AUC ruling that more extensive wildlife impact studies were not required, owing to its former use and place inside Medicine Hat’s corporate limits.
Similar projects in Calgary proposed by DP Energy were approved without wildlife impact studies in 2019. They are now operating and partly owned by Atco.
The AUC determined that much of the site had been previously disturbed by industrial activity and was generally earmarked for future industrial and housing development in City of Medicine Hat long-term planning.
The city itself issued a development permit in 2019 for an original version of the site.
