Put up or shut up

Some more interesting tidbits are yielded upon a careful examination of the environmental documents filed for the review of the proposed "infeed" from the so-called Lower Churchill project to Newfoundland.

The following map shows the proposed transmission line route (in dark blue) from the proposed hydro station at Gull Island to the point near Forteau where the line would commence its submarine crossing of the Strait of Belle Isle.

The background map, however, is from one of the Hydro-Quebec filings with Quebec's environmental assessment agency, BAPE, concerning its proposed La Romaine project. The map includes the quaint but meaningless tinkering with the southern Labrador boundary and the boilerplate "Tracé de 1927 du Conseil privé (non définitif)". The features at red in the bottom left corner include the assessment area and locations of the proposed RO-3 and RO-4 power plants. The NALCO(R) transmission line route, at the same scale, is superimposed on the Hydro-Quebec map:

Catch that? The Danny Williams Memorial Power Line passes through the watersheds of three of the rivers (the Mecatina, St. Augustine, and St. Paul) which arise in Labrador but drain south into Quebec and the Gulf of St. Lawrence: .

So it's put up or shut up time for the frothing tin-foil hat nationalist sets both in Quebec and Newfoundland. The Quebec government can give credence to the Quebec nationalists who feel that they should be exercising a claim to Labrador, or at least the recently-notorious (again) headwaters region — and to the Newfoundland nationalists who insist that Quebec is making such a claim.

The likeliest result? The same thing that resulted when, for example, the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador permitted the DND weapons range at Mininipi Lake (the green half-circle) or granted mineral claims in the supposedly controverted region (expired claims in pale grey, active ones in red.)

[map source here]

That is to say: absolutely nothing.