RIDGEWAY residents say BC Hydro used "disingenuous tactics and outright lies" in describing its plans to renovate the East Fourth Street electrical substation.
"Our main concern with the BC Hydro substation is that our neighbourhood was lied to," Dave Brett told City of North Vancouver council May 7.
"Lied to in terms of the scope of the project and the outcome of the project. The substation we were told was going to be dismantled has actually increased in size and another substation was added."
In September of 2009, spokeswoman Donna McGeachie presented council with the substation plans on behalf of B.C. Transmission Corporation, which was consolidated into BC Hydro a few months later.
The East Fourth Street substation, one of nine on the North Shore, had two systems, she explained - a four kilovolt one and a 12 kV one.
"The four kV load, it's a small load, is going to be transferred to a nearby substation and the old infrastructure will be removed and dismantled," she said in 2009. "A new indoor substation will be constructed where the old four kV load system was, and a new control building is going to be built just to the south.
"The 12 kV load which serves the majority of the station will be dismantled after the new equipment is installed.
The appearance of the substation would be "greatly improved," she told council.
"Old infrastructure will be gone and there will be a new building which will enclose all of the electrical equipment," McGeachie said.
But after two years of construction, say residents, nothing could be further from the truth.
"They lied," Brett said, showing photos of the unsightly metal structures. "As you can see the old infrastructure is still there and actually bigger than it was. They are adding to it."
An L-shaped building that McGeachie said would be oriented away from the street was actually built so that the long side, which holds the transformers, faces the residential neighbours and heightens the noise, Brett said.
"This is exactly opposite of their public releases," he said. "Hydro needs to be accountable for their disingenuous tactics and outright lies."
Brett brought a 250-signature petition, which also highlights his neighbours' unhappiness with TransLink's operations in the area.
"I remember the pretty pictures," Coun. Rod Clark said. "I remember the enclosure of the building, I remember the old substation stuff was coming down. If that wasn't the case, then why didn't they tell us? That's not just disingenuous, it borders on fraud. We find out about this two years later because the community is up in arms? What is going on?"
In an interview with the North Shore News, BC Hydro's stakeholder engagement manager Lesley Wood admitted that the images shown in 2009 were "misleading."
"They focused on the new buildings and equipment and did not show what would remain," she said. "It's unfortunate. We didn't intend it to be misleading."
The pictures McGeachie showed residents, said Wood, were drawn before all the design work was complete. By the time it came to actually construct the L-shaped building, Hydro realized their plans wouldn't work.
Wood had no comment on why residents and council weren't told of the new plans. She said she became aware of complaints about a year ago and apologized to residents. Hydro has since sent out written updates, the most recent on March 15.
"We had no intention of being misleading in our communications with residents. We did everything we could to rectify that," she said.
Although the work was supposed to be finished this month, Wood said the completion date has been pushed back to the end of the year.
While residents may not relish another seven months of construction on their block, the good news is the finished product will be an improvement over what is visible today.
"There is a big chunk of it still slated for removal," she said.
"All of it is not going to be removed and I think that's where some of the misunderstanding came in.
"Some of it is still essential, but there is a considerable amount on the east side that will be removed in late summer or during the fall."
