A Winnipeg court has issued an injunction to Manitoba Hydro, which has been obeyed by Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation protestors, ending a roadblock blockade at the Wuswatim dam construction project. The blockade was set up between Highway 391 and the security gate to the dam. The 200-megawatt generating-station dam is to be located about 45 kilometres southwest of Thompson on the Burntwood River. The original blockade organizers started taking it down Friday night, but a smaller group opposed to the dam project itself maintained it. The original protest group of about three dozen people, mainly from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN), said not enough aboriginals have been hired to work on the $1.6 billion generation project.
John Markowsky, Manitoba Hydro's resident manager at Wuskwatim, is a 25-year veteran with the utility and told the Thompson Citizen May 15 the contractors he's working with at Wuskwatim are "world class" and part of a "small fraternity" of travelling global engineers and skilled tradesmen who move from project to project, some of whom he has worked with before on projects as far away as Africa, India and Vietnam.
The Wuskwatim Power Limited Partnership, a legal entity comprised of Manitoba Hydro and the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN), is developing the 200-MW Wuskwatim Generating Station. Manitoba Hydro is providing construction and management services to WPLP, in accordance with the project development agreement signed in June 2006. A general partner, 5022649 Manitoba Ltd., which is a wholly-owned Manitoba Hydro subsidiary and governed by a board of directors, which consists of four Manitoba Hydro and two NCN representatives, carries out the business affairs of the Wuskwatim Power Limited Partnership.
The $289-million contract for the Wuskwatim Generating Station's general civil construction work was awarded last November to the O'Connell-Neilson-EBC Partnership. The consortium consists of managing partner H.J. O'Connell Construction Ltd., whose project office is in St. John's, Nfld., Neilson Inc. from Saint-Nicholas, Que., and EBC Inc. from L'Ancienne-Lorette, Que. Under the Wuskwatim Power Limited Partnership, Manitoba Hydro manages the project, including the tendering process.
The original general civil contract was tendered in 2007 and only one bid was received. As a result, the tender was subsequently cancelled. Manitoba Hydro, acting as project manager, divided the originally planned work into smaller construction contracts and Nebraska-based Peter Kiewit & Sons Ltd. was awarded the contract to do overburden and initial rock excavation and construct the stage one cofferdams. Pennecon was awarded a second contract to do structures area rock excavation and concrete aggregate production.
Wuskwatim is part of the Nelson River hydro-electric projects, which dates back to studies done between 1955 and 1960 for the planned construction of a series of dams and power plants on the Nelson River. The project began to take shape with the construction in 1957 of the Kelsey dam and hydro-electric power station, and later was expanded to include the diversion of the Upper Churchill River into the Nelson River and the transformation of Lake Winnipeg, the world's 11th largest freshwater lake, into a hydro-electric reservoir.
In 1976, the Churchill River Diversion Project began. Flow was diverted by a series of channels and control structures into the Nelson River. The Nelson River hydro-electric stations at Kelsey, Kettle, built in 1970, Long Spruce, which opened in 1977, and Limestone, which opened in 1990, were built on the Lower Nelson River to support both Manitoba load growth and export plans. Limestone, the largest generating station in Manitoba, is located on the Lower Nelson River, only 90 kilometres from Hudson Bay.
The great distances between generating sites on the Nelson River and load centres in southern Manitoba required the use of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines to bring the energy to market. When these lines began operation as the Nelson River Bipole in 1972, they were the HVDC lines in the world.
A new high voltage direct current transmission line - called BiPole III -will begin at Gillam, 300 kilometres northeast of Thompson, and run west of Lake Winnipegosis and Lake Manitoba, south along the lakes, travelling back east to the new Riel converter station being built just east of Winnipeg.
Wuskwatim is expected to produce enough electricity to power 70,000 homes in Manitoba and generate additional export power sales to Minnesota and Wisconsin though term sheet deals, beginning in 2018 and 2020, for more than $5.5 billion in hydro-electricity exports to Northern States Power of Minneapolis and Wisconsin Public Service.
Current projections show that Manitoba's domestic demand for new power is not expected to increase beyond current generation levels until 2020. Opening Wuskwatim nine years earlier in 2011 is targeted mainly at additional export power revenues.
