Will G8 Adhere To Their Solar Street Lights Project?
The G8 is planning to take action for the green future project. However the project is not going on well. OTTAWA — the environmental showpiece of the G8 summit has lost some of its luster. When the leaders arrived in Ontario's cottage country, only 5of the planned 15 solar powered street lights was installed.
The solar street lamps are the G8 summit's "signature environmental project." They were supposed to line the pathways of a resort near Huntsville, Ont., during the leaders' one-night stay.
But the lighting company says the tough terrain makes for slow going, and there isn't enough time left to get all 15 lights installed before the summit starts.
"There may be only five of them now used in different spots because of rocks," said Ove Bakmand, president of Net Electric Ltd.
"But they will be done in a couple of days, by the end of this week." Summit organizers had high hopes for the solar lights.
The government awarded the contract to Net Electric on May 25 -- a month before the start of the summit. The rush order didn't leave the company much time to do the job.
"It was basically unreasonable," Bakmand said. The solar lights will be moved from the resort into the town after the summit as a gift to Huntsville.
"As the Muskoka 2010 G8 summit is being held at a privately owned resort, the signature environmental project will be installed at the Deerhurst Resort for use during the summit only and then gifted to the town of Huntsville for installation at a location within the town," the document says.
The Foreign Affairs Department, which a contract document lists as the buyer of the lights, referred questions to Infrastructure Canada, which in turn referred questions to the town of Huntsville.
It’s not easy to spread the solar lights in the cities. Before the solar street lamps getting so easy to use, some technical break through need to be made. What’s more, we have to deal with the conventional street lights to get rid of the potential pollution these discarded lights will do to our environment.
