Construction of Ontario power plant shut down over safety concerns

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Construction of an Ontario power plant connected to the Liberal government's billion-dollar gas-plant scandal has been shut down over safety problems with the electrical system.

The Ministry of Labour issued two stop-work orders at Eastern Power Ltd.'s plant Thursday afternoon, bringing construction at the 289-megawatt plant to a halt.

The move capped a dramatic week, during which scores of workers at the site walked off the job, accusing Eastern of endangering their lives with slipshod safety practices and arbitrarily firing workers who complain. They say the government has not done enough to force the company to deal with these problems.

The plant, dubbed Green Electron, is being built near Sarnia to replace a Mississauga facility that was cancelled by the Liberals during the 2011 election campaign.

Green Electron has had a string of problems. The Ministry of Labour has written 196 orders on safety hazards over the last two years. And last April, work at the site was shut down for several days after a beam collapsed and a concrete support pillar cracked.

Thursday's stop-work orders indicate Eastern was exposing workers to live electrical equipment without telling them and not following proper procedures. Eastern must fix the problems to the satisfaction of government investigators before construction can resume.

In a memo to workers Thursday afternoon, an Eastern Power manager wrote that no one should report to work the next day. "The site will be closed to all trades and sub-contractors until further notice," the e-mail read. "There will not be any work on site tomorrow."

Eastern Power's owners, brothers Gregory Vogt and Hubert Vogt, did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Electricians who work at the site told The Globe and Mail that Eastern has few safety procedures in place to control who has access to electrical equipment.

"They don't even follow their own lockout procedure. They hand out keys like candy," said Jeremy Robertson, a foreman at the site. "We had to fight with them just to have them put locks on equipment … zero communication between management and the people actually doing the job."

Electrician Wesley Segade said electrical panels are often connected to power without anyone telling the people working on them. On one occasion, he said, an apprentice nearly began working on an electrical cabinet charged with 125 volts without knowing it was live. Luckily, he said, she checked it with a voltage tester beforehand and discovered the danger.

"She could have been burnt or hurt or even killed," he said.

Last weekend, Eastern decided to test the plant's steam lines by filling them with fluid at 450 pounds of pressure but did not tell any of the workers, according to complaints filed with the government by unions representing tradespeople at the site. When workers arrived on Monday morning and discovered the system had been unexpectedly pressurized, they feared it could burst and injure someone.

Pipefitter Dan Marshall said lines have to be checked rigorously to ensure every valve and gasket has been properly installed before they are put under pressure. He said the workers have no idea whether Eastern did this.

"There's no assurance that the proper valving or the proper gasketing is in place," he said. "It's a rather large bomb."

Tradespeople refused to work Monday and, on Tuesday, set up an information line in front of the plant that shut down construction for the day.

Labour Minister Kevin Flynn personally intervened earlier this year to try to sort out problems at the power plant.

But Mick Cataford, an official with the Sarnia local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, says the government's enforcement of the law so far has not fixed the problems. In a letter to Mr. Flynn on Friday, he wrote that Green Electron is a "dysfunctional jobsite" and Eastern Power has a "lackadaisical approach to safety."

Ross Tius of the United Association, the pipefitters' union, also wrote to Mr. Flynn, asking him to step up enforcement. "I respectfully request that you enact some serious monitoring to a construction site that has gone rogue," he wrote.

In a statement, Mr. Flynn said he has ordered inspectors to keep a close eye on the plant and to try to reach a "lasting resolution" to the problems.

"It's disappointing and frustrating to see these issues persist at this site," he said. "This situation can't continue as it has been going."

The Liberals cancelled the unpopular Mississauga plant and another one in Oakville before the 2011 election, in what was widely seen as a political ploy to save local Liberal candidates from defeat. The Auditor General later estimated the cancellations would cost the people of Ontario as much as $1.1-billion.

To compensate Eastern Power, which had been building the Mississauga plant, the Liberals agreed to give it the contract for the plant near Sarnia, plus a $45-million interest-free loan to help finance construction.