$13M allocated to raise lake near Getty home

The Edmonton J o u r n a l , Saturday, July 6,1991 A5 $ 13M allocated to raise lake near Getty home Opposition says project abuse of power by premier BRIAN LAGHI Journal Staff Writer Buffalo Lake The provincial cabinet has approved spending $ 13 million to raise the lake beside Premier Don Getty's country home. Construction and engineering work on the controversial Buffalo Lake project will begin sometime this year, Environment Minister Ralph Klein announced Friday. The cabinet agreed with the re­cent report of a public review pan­el which suggested that the scheme was environmentally safe and should go ahead, Klein said in a prepared statement. Klein was attending the Calgary Stampede on Friday and was un­available for further comment. But opposition politicians said the decision smacks of pork- barrel politicking. Getty's Stettler- area home is located on the southern shore within view of the lake. " I think it's a phenomenal abuse of the premier's power," said New Democrat environment critic John Mclnnis. The on- again, off- again project was killed several times since it was first proposed 22 years ago. Mclnnis noted that the project was revived just weeks after Getty re­turned to the legislature in a 1989 byelection in the riding. Appointing a panel to look into the project was simply a way of jus- John Mclnnis tifying a foregone conclusion, he said. " The provincial government was poised and ready. It was just a mat­ter of putting it through a veneer of a process," Mclnnis said. He also criticized the government for releasing the report on a Friday in an effort to minimize negative media coverage. The panel was told to review the idea early this spring after an eco­nomic assessment found that rais­ing the lake would benefit area cot­tage owners and few others. But the panel decided that the project would also aid local agri­culture as well as the many bathers, boaters and others who visit the area. Chairman Don Thorne acknowl­edged that Getty will benefit from raising the lake. " Certainly he will benefit, but I don't see how he will benefit any more than other people in the area," said Thorne. Thorne said Buffalo Lake is one of the few bodies of water in the area which can be used for recre­ational purposes. But Liberal environment critic Grant Mitchell said he is not" con­vinced that the project won't kill fish in the lake. The plan was originally killed because of fears that pumping Red Deer River water to raise the lake would create unacceptable amounts of algae, which would rob fish of oxygen. He called the decision base poli­tics. " Premier Don Getty is using taxpayers' money as if it were his own," he said. " He's out of control. This guy has got to be stopped." , Mclnnis said he is still hopeful the federal government will do an environmental impact assessment on the proposal. The department of fisheries and oceans is reviewing the panel's re­port.