Notes from a scrum (II)

Another interesting nugget from His Dear Scrum on Wednesday:

So, if there’s another route [i.e. besides through Gros Morne] and it can be done, reasonably – butImean, I have to make decisions on the basis of economics as well for the people of the province. Because if you take a hundred million dollars out here, then it’s a hundred million less that you have for health care and education and all the other needs. So, y’know, we have to be responsible, we can’t just unilaterally say we’re gonna jump over the moon because that happens to be, not gonna bother anybody, but it’s cheaper. Er, it’s more expensive, but it’s not gonna bother anybody.

Love the Freudian slip!

And of course you will all hope, for his sake, that Our Dear Drill Rigs find at least $14-million worth of recoverable revenue somewhere under Parsons Pond. It would be terrible if We ended up with $14-million less for health care and education and all the other needs, wouldn’t it?

But anyway, enough with the digression. Here’s the thing: yet again the Premier is his own best argument for overhauling the math curriculum.

He bandies about the “$100-million” figure for the costs – presumably the additional costs, otherwise why would it matter? – of taking the proposed transmission line east of Gros Morne National Park, instead of through it.

Remember – and this point cannot be stressed enough – the routings which avoid Gros Morne are, in Euclidean space, shorter than the routings which go through it.

Remember also, that according to Nalco(r)’s own documentation, the transmission line is sensitive to distance; a routing which would have kept the line closer to the Trans-Labrador Highway having been rejected for adding 200 km to the length of the undertaking.

And finally, remember that less than two months ago, Premier Bad-at-Math himself conceded that the costing of the various routings hadn’t been done at all:

“We can’t just start carving out those kinds of dollars … without even have a proper costing. It’s wrong to oversimplify it, but if it meant putting it into health care as opposed to putting it into UNESCO, I would put it into health care, he said.
“It’s not as simple as that, but we do have to strike that balance. It’s not a small amount of money. It is a significant amount of money.”

Yes, it will be a significant amount of money, to build the approximately 132 km of transmission line along the alternate route.

Just as it would be a significant amount of money to build it along the Gros Morne route.

Just as it would be a significant amount of money to build the transmission line segment within Labrador, under the Strait of Belle Isle, down the Northern Peninsula, and across the rest of Newfoundland.

Steel towers and high-tension lines cost money. They aren’t free. In fact, the projected cost bandied about earlier this year, when Nalco(r) filed its environmental paperwork – all just a big joke at Kathy Dunderdale’s expense, we learned this week – was $2-bilion. Over the 1200-km length of the line, from Gull Island to Soldier’s Pond, that works out to about $1.67-million per kilometre. And that means that, all things being equal – which they aren’t, but play along – the 132 kilometre “alternative” route would represent $220-million in construction costs.

The necessary implication of that back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the Gros Morne route, being roughly seventy clicks longer than the alternative, would cost over $330-million.

If the alternative route costs – just plain costs - $100-million, then this means that its per-kilometre cost is in fact half that of the transmission line as a whole.

Just so we’re clear on the arithmetic, Mr. Premier, that means it would be cheaper.

If, on the other hand, the alternative route would cost $100-million more than the Gros Morne route (again, all things being equal, that’s $330-million, plus $100-million), then, at $430-million, the alternative route would be almost double the per-kilometre cost of the transmission line as a whole.

That’s a pretty serious overrun for a routing which is not only 70 km shorter than the Gros Morne route, but also, once the summit of the Long Range has been traversed, runs in almost a bee-line towards its junction with the main route.

Now, this is all so very back-of-the-envelope. As the Premier himself said in July, he tossed around numbers “without even have a proper costing” [sic].

“Without even have a proper costing” means that Nalco(r) hadn’t yet got a handle on the costs, or additional costs, associated with the alternative route east of Gros Morne.

But it also means that Nalco(r) hadn’t yet got a handle on the costs, or additional costs, associated with the Gros Morne route, including any visual and other mitigation measures that might have had to be taken, had the whole thing not just been a ha-ha-very-funny joke on His part.

And yet, two months on, it is clear that the Premier is still bandying about a number (“one hundred million dollars!”) that has about as much connection to reality as “google dollars!” or “infinity dollars!” or “a hundred dollars!” or “π dollars!”.

Why is it clear?

For the simple fact that he’s still bandying it around.

And because he insists, even against the evidence of stupid things like stupid maps with their stupid geometry and map scales with their stupid numbers, that the alternative route is longer than the Gros Morne route. Which it isn’t.

All of which could be cleared up quite easily by asking (a) whether Nalco(r) has in fact prepared the variant cost estimates for each of the potential routings it is studying, (b) whether they have, in fact, abandoned the ha-ha-very-funny just-kidding Gros Morne route, and (c) how the costs of the various routings compare to one another, and to the costs of building the other, less variable, segments of the transmission line.

Or, (d), whether He is still just making it up as he goes along.

Again, maybe Dawn Dalley at Nalco(r) (737-1315, ddalley +at+ nalcorenergy.com) or Tracy Barron in Nalco(r)’s political wing (729-5282, tracybarron +at+ gov.nl.ca), can clarify the issue, and refine the Premier’s suspiciously-round estimate of $100-million.