![]() ![]() On this patch of Lake Erie shore south of Hamilton, industry and nature are making peace. The abundance of wildlife returning to the site - rare ribbon snakes and Jefferson salamanders also live here - reflects a broader societal transformation. ![]() The last remaining buildings of the old Nanticoke coal plant (right) will be dismantled by September. It felt like I was witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signaled the end of communism in the late 1980s. The building that contained the aging powerhouse was so stripped down, I could look through it and observe the lake. ![]() To visit Nanticoke on this summer day in 2019 is to encounter the age of coal at the very moment of its unravelling. Three years later, OPG and its Indigenous partners - Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation - gained permission to construct a 44-megawatt solar array of 192,000 panels. In the distance rose a buck’s five-point rack. A deer galloped up the hillside, tail erect. One of them grabbed the back of the reptile’s oval shell, gently lifted it, and carried it to the side of the road.Ĭontinuing along the crackling gravel, I saw something thrust itself through tall grasses ahead of us. We were travelling with staffers from Ontario Power Generation, the solar project’s largest equity partner. It snapped open its eagle beak, hissing at us. Perhaps 30 centimetres in diameter, this was no wee pet shop critter. It's now home to a solar energy facility.Īs our truck bumped along a gravel path above the former powerhouse, I spotted what looked like a derelict car tire. The site once housed North America's largest coal-fired power plant. But as of March, it's been officially transformed. Touring the grounds of the now mothballed Nanticoke Generating Station in southwestern Ontario, I didn't expect to see wildlife. ![]()
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