Toronto Hydro’s ice storm report leaves us with lousy choices: Hume
Independent panel’s review suggests ice storms are unavoidable, and reducing trees might be the most efficient way to mitigate the damage.

Thestar.com
June 19, 2014
By Christopher Hume

We have reached a point in our history where it’s almost impossible to tell the problems from the solutions.

Take the Toronto Ice Storm of 2013, for example. As nasty as its effects might have been, the answers could be even more painful. The damage that left upwards of a million Torontonians without electricity for days, some for weeks, was caused by limbs and branches falling from ice-laden trees and knocking down power lines.

From the utility’s perspective, the obvious response is to more aggressively prune or cut down as many of those trees as possible and get them out of the way.

But of course chopping down trees only exacerbates the conditions that helped create such extreme weather events in the first place. Not only that, but Toronto without its trees would not be a place many of us would choose to inhabit.

Indeed, just last week, TD Bank informed us that the value of Toronto’s urban forest is no less than $7 billion. And that doesn’t include “aesthetics,” which may not have a monetary value but count for a lot in the real world.

Some would like to see all those street-cluttering cables buried, if not forgotten. But the estimated cost of that would be a staggering $15 billion. Though that seems way out of line, that’s the amount we’re given.

Overall, an independent panel convened to review Toronto Hydro’s response to the ice storm last Christmas says the utility’s actions were “in line with industry norms.”

However, consultant Miki Deric agreed, Toronto Hydro is still not entirely comfortable with the demands of contemporary communications. He also said the utility’s various arms are not fully integrated.

The panel made it clear that we cannot avoid another ice storm, mainly because of global warming. With no (affordable) alternatives, the most efficient course could well be to reduce the urban canopy.

It’s a variation on the old theme of destroying something in order to save it. In this case, that would mean the livable city as well as the environment. That pretty much covers it all.

But we must have energy, lots of energy. Interesting, though, that Toronto Hydro, valued at $3 billion, is worth less than half the city’s trees.

“Urban forests do more than beautify the scenery,” insisted TD chief economist Craig Alexander. “They represent an important investment in environmental condition, human health and the overall quality of life.”

But, then, so does electricity. What happens when one comes at the cost of the other? What happens when we must make this sort of either/or decision?

It doesn’t bode well for the future of this or any city. Yet these are the dire options that await us. And as a country that has put so much of its faith in the dirtiest eggs in the dirty energy basket, we are hardly in a position to feel sorry for ourselves as our choices evaporate.

Toronto Hydro comes out of the review intact, but the panel’s mandate was as narrow as could be. The real issue isn’t simply the next ice storm, or “weather event,” it’s figuring out how to replace an energy system that cannot be sustained.

In all the talk about “industry norms,” it’s easy to forget that the questions tackled by the panel are symptoms, not causes, of larger concerns. As much as we would like to focus on the former and forget the latter, that’s not an option. If it were, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.