DARYN CAISTER:  The federal government has announced a further $182 million in spending on Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., partially to cover cost overruns at Chalk River nuclear facility. The facility is famous for production of a large portion of the world’s medical isotopes and for a tragic series of problems in the last year. AECL is now responsible for eating up $824 million of the current year’s federal budget, 50% more than was allotted in last year’s budget. This comes as the government is planning to restructure and sell AECL’s commercial reactor division. Of the $182 million, $110 million has been designated for plant refurbishment work on the AECL’s commercial reactors, and $72 million will go to fix the National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River. The latest in a series of timeline revisions is that the NRU should be up and running producing medical isotopes again by April. Chalk River has been out of business since June. While the federal government still says it is supports AECL, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister called the AECL last summer, “one of the largest sinkholes of government money probably in the history of the government of Canada”. [ index ]

DYLAN JERVIS:  The Province of Alberta announced that it will roll back most of its year-old royalty hike on oil in order to attract oil and gas investment back to the province. It also announced that it was looking into ways to decrease the bureaucratic hassle for new investments.

Under the roll-back plan, top royalty rates will drop from 50 to 36% for natural gas, and from 50% to 40% on non-oil sands crude oil. This almost completely reverses the rate hike that Premier Ed Stelmach introduced last year in an effort to give the provincial government a bigger share of energy revenues.

Energy Minister Ron Liepert was quoted on Thursday, saying “We can’t pretend that oil and gas investment levels haven’t eroded or that we don’t have a responsibility to current and future generations of Albertans to address that.” The roll-back will become effective January 2011. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty announced this week his office was considering a water conservation rating system for appliances similar to the Energy Star program for electric appliances. The Premier said that the people of Ontario have come to understand the importance and positive benefits of reduced electricity use and efficiency, but that the concept had not yet permeated water conservation issues in Ontario. The ratings would theoretically be constructed and regulated in the same fashion as the Energy Star program, which is a partnership between industry and Natural Resources Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency. Opposition critics were quick to jump on the announcement to criticize the premier about pursuing water conservation initiatives while many areas of Ontario still had long standing boil water advisories and quality concerns. The premier admitted that the province could be doing a better job cleaning up water resources, but denied that the sudden focus on water had anything to do with next year’s elections. Opposition critics accuse the premier of focusing on water as a segue to bringing up the Conservative failure in the Walkerton water tragedy 10 years ago where incompetent water quality management resulted in the deaths of at least 7 people. [ index ]

DYLAN JERVIS:  The three gleaming towers at 100, 200, and 300 Consilium Place in Scarborough have become such an unanticipated death trap for migrating birds that two local environmental groups have began a lawsuit against the buildings managers.

The environmental groups – Ontario Nature and Ecojustice (formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund) – initiated a private prosecution under the Environmental Protection Act and the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act. The buildings, up to 17 stories high and made of mirrored glass, have been the site of more than 7,000 bird deaths over the last decade. Most daytime collisions have occurred between the ground and 4th floors.

The high incidence of bird deaths due to hitting buildings has been of concern for many years. The non-profit group Lights Out Toronto has led a campaign to encourage building managers to turn of lights in the evenings so that birds are not distracted. However, this is the first time that the law have been used in order to effect change. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  A new study shows that the vast amounts of road salt used in Canada is having a toxic affect on lakes and groundwater. The University of Toronto study was performed between 2002 and 2003 shows that during spring thaws, downstream water bodies and aquifers jump up to a level of salinity that is close to salt concentrations found in ocean water. The study monitored how salt spread on roads in the Pickering area of Toronto made its way from the roads into the surrounding environment and the effects it incurred on local habitat. Pickering was used as a sample area for the study due to the relatively small 27 kilometre watershed. The study, which was published in the Journal of Sedimentary Geology, was described by lead author and UofT Professor Nick Eyles as a “really bad news story” describing a “relentless chemical assault on a watershed”. The study area recorded approximately 7,600 tonnes of road salt being distributed in the area in one season, and detected at least half of this, 3,600 tonnes ending up in local watersheds. Canada uses approximately 5 million tonnes of road salt annually, which equals about 150 kilograms per person per year, mostly in Ontario and Quebec. Environment Canada has recognized this toxic problem, and implemented voluntary codes of practice to reduce usage in 2004. After the study was published, Environment Canada said that it was reviewing usage with current data and that it would consider further action if usage had not improved due to the voluntary measures. [ index ]

DYLAN JERVIS: B.C. premier Gordon Campbell reassured the Vancouver Board of Trade on Monday that the $1.4 billion Evergreen Rapid Transit Line will be built on time and ready to run by 2014.

There has been concern that the rail line – connecting Vancouver to the North eastern parts of the Lower mainland, including Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Port Moody – does not have the money to cover all costs. “It’s going to be built in partnership. We’re going to get it done on behalf of all of you” Mr Campbell said, promising that details on funding will be released soon.

These vague comments sought to address concerns over how TransLink, the regional transit authority, might finance its $400 million share of the project. Given that TransLink spokesperson Ken Hardie said Monday “We agree with what everyone is saying about the need for the line, [but] we do not have the source of the funding to support that investment, that debt we would be taking on”, the future of the line is still cloudy. Construction of the project was supposed to start this year, but has since been put off until 2011. [ index ]

DARYN CAISTER:  This week, Canadian supermarket giant Loblaws became one of the fist commercial participants in Ontario’s feed-in tariff program for renewable energy. The announcement was made this week by Ontario’s new Energy Minister, Brad Duguid as his first big announcement after taking over the office in January. The feed-in tariff program, which is the first of its kind in North America, pays a premium for companies and individual citizens who produce power using renewable energy (such as solar or wind generation) and feed this power back into the local grid. The rates for commercial and private interests are 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour for on-shore wind farms and up to 80.2 cents for solar power. These rates are guaranteed for 20 years, dramatically lowering the uncertainty around the payback timescales for renewable energy. While Loblaws and the office of the Minister of Energy declined to comment on the details at this time on the deal, industry experts told the media that Loblaws will be installing solar panels on the roofs of many of its stores across Ontario. The Ontario Power Authority, which oversees the feed-in tariff program for the provincial government, said that the response to the program has been far better than expected, and that it has been overwhelmed with both private and public requests for participation in the program. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE:  China and India have formally joined the Copenhagen Accord on climate change. Both countries have informed the United Nations that they can be included on the list of nations that agree to the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In joining the accord, China has agreed to try and reduce its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. Likewise, India will aim for a reduction of 20 to 25 percent by the same benchmarks. It remains to be seen how closely China and India will be able to achieve their targets, as the accord is non-binding and vague on details. The Copenhagen Accord was drafted at the UN Climate Change Conference last December, and is widely regarded as a failure for being unable to produce a binding successor agreement to the Kyoto Treaty, which will expire in 2012. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE:  The government of The Maldives has announced that it is turning its territorial waters into a shark sanctuary. The 90,000 square kilometres that comprise the waters owned by the tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean will be off-limits to shark fishing. In addition, the country will outlaw the import and export of shark fins; a lucrative business that has been devastating to shark species. The move follows a similar one by country of Palau, an island nation in the South Pacific. In a press release following the declaration, a spokesman for the Pew Environment group applauded the move stating: ”Countries are beginning to recognize just how important vibrant shark populations are to healthy ocean ecosystems, and to their ecotourism industries.” [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE:  In a related story, the United Kingdom is moving closer to creating a vast marine reserve of its own. The Chagos Archipelago, located in the Indian Ocean just south of The Maldives is a British foreign territory and is home to some of the most pristine coral reefs in the world. The UK has just completed its 3-month public consultation on the idea, and is now considering creating a ‘Chagos Protected Area’, which would turn the archipelago and its waters into a marine reserve completely off-limits to commercial fishing. The proposed reserve would be 544,000 square kilometres: larger than the UK itself. Though conservation groups around the world are pushing for the designation, the move is controversial due to the displacement of the islands’ former inhabitants, who have been pushing to return. The islands had been inhabited since the 18th century when French coconut plantations were set-up there. The local residents were removed from the islands in the 1960s, however, by the British government to make way for an American military base. Since then, the former inhabitants, most of whom have relocated to Mauritius, have been fighting to be allowed to return. They fear that the creation of a marine reserve would prevent them from ever being able to return, and that the creation of the reserve is being done without their consent. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE:  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has ordered an independent review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The IPCC was created by the UN to collect and analyze global climate research and to produce reports on climate change for use by the UN and world governments. Lately, the IPCC has fallen under criticism following revelations that its 2007 report contained inaccuracies and errors. The report’s chapter on the retreat of Himalyan glaciers due to climate change was specifically singled out for being poorly cited and for drawing exaggerated conclusions. This has served to undermine the authority of the IPCC the veracity of its reports. The UN has called on the InterAcademy Council, an organization comprising science institutes around the world, to put together an independent review of the IPCC and make recommendations to restore credibility to the panel. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon sought to point out that although there were problems with portions of the report, the science behind climate change remains sound. In a statement, Secretary Moon stated: “Let me be clear: the threat posed by climate change is real. Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change.” The independent review is expected to be completed by August of this year. [ index ]