AECOM Draft EA Report and HIFN’s 3rd Party Review
Council passed a Land Law in August directing Henvey Inlet Wind to do a comprehensive environmental assessment of the impacts of the proposed wind farm on Reserve No. 2. The assessment work was done by AECOM over the course of this year, and the draft environmental assessment report was delivered to Council in November.
You can request a full copy of the draft EA report from the band office or contacting Communications Coordinator Jennifer Ashawasegai:
The draft EA report is highly technical in format and approximately 12,000 pages in length, you will find a much shorter “plain language” overview of the main features of the draft report here 2015_DEC_17_EA_SUMMARY. (missing pdf) Copies of this summary will be mailed to all Eligible Voters over the next few days.
As provided in the Land Law, Council retained its own consultants to review AECOM’s draft EA Report: Arcadis Canada Inc., led by Anneliese Grieves, and Savanta Inc., led by Tom Hilditch.
At an open Council meeting on 15 December, which was attended by approximately thirty members of our community, AECOM did a presentation on the draft EA Report and our third party consultants delivered their peer review comments.
You will find the Arcadis review here Arcadis Peer Review of Draft EA - 2015 12 14 (missing pdf) and the Savanata review, which deals with the impacts on species at risk, here Savanta SAR Review 2015 12 09-.(missing pdf)
Subsequent to the presentations, all three consulting firms participated in a question and answer session with community members.
Both Arcadis and Savanta were generally satisfied with AECOM’s research and with the mitigation proposals in the draft EA Report, but both made specific recommendations for improvements.
AECOM indicated it would make the recommended changes, and its final version of the Environmental Assessment Report will be considered by Council at an open Council meeting scheduled for Tuesday, 06 January 2016, starting at 1:00 pm.
I want to invite all members to review the draft EA Report and the Arcadis and Savanta reviews on this website, and to attend the open Council meeting on 06 January. You can also contact me or the Lands Advisory Committee if you unable to attend and have any comments or questions.
Miigwetch!
Chief Wayne M. McQuabbie
