I’m Chantal, a summer student with Manitoba Hydro who participated in the spring 2022 post-construction monitoring tour of MMTP, held Friday May 13th, 2022. It was an extremely special experience for me to take part in this, especially in my first week of work.
We started the day at a meeting point in St. Norbert where I got to meet the MMTP Monitors in attendance and learn about the work they’ve done so far. Then, we convoyed out to the first site. Due to flooding, we couldn’t access the first monitoring site itself, but we met near the site. It was very windy outside this day, and we could hear the corona effect from the transmission line which I’ve never heard before. It’s a hissing noise that I learned is produced because of the ionization of the air. It is common in high voltage transmission lines and thankfully was not dangerous.
We were able to access two of the monitoring sites despite the flooding. Since there was a lot of new vegetation growth in the area it was really nice to be able to spend more quality time at these two sites identifying traditional plants. I got to learn about the plants and what they are traditionally used for. Below I attached a photo of a Red Willow we found at the Tower 441 monitoring site. Thanks to Daryll, I learned that this traditional plant has many medicinal properties such as reliving headaches, migraines, coughs, colds, and more. The red bark on the outside is made into tea for people to drink. It is also spiritually significant and often used during times of ceremony to give offerings. After removing the outside bark, the underlayer of bark is used for traditional tobacco, called kinnikinnick. This is just one of many traditional plants we came across.
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for spending time in nature. I love being in the forest, watching animals, and sending time in the water, but I’ve never had many opportunities to spend time learning about the plants and animals around us. Getting to learn so much about these things was one of the reasons why this experience was so meaningful to me.
It was great to see the regrowth of plants and evidence of animals in the area. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the impacts transmission lines can have on the environment in order to help mitigate negative impacts in future project planning.
I hope it works out that I can join the summer 2022 monitoring tour.
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