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Grand visions in the wind

Wind power mogul Rick West of WestTech Energy has a grand vision for Squamish that includes wind turbine manufacturing plants and a 32,000 square foot research institute.

Wind power mogul Rick West of WestTech Energy has a grand vision for Squamish that includes wind turbine manufacturing plants and a 32,000 square foot research institute.

West said he intends to join Woodfibre union representatives and Mayor Ian Sutherland in a trip to Victoria, tentatively set for Tuesday (Jan. 10). West said he hopes to appeal to Premier Gordon Campbell for support of a skills retraining program that will provide workers for a proposed wind turbine manufacturing plant.

"Hopefully they're going to support the Squamish people and existing employees of Woodfibre for retraining programs," said West. "I would like to see $5 to $10 million, which is a small investment from British Columbia."

West said that as many as 85 jobs may be available as soon as a year from now because WestTech is purchasing a one half-megawatt turbine from the U.S.

"We're probably going to manufacture that in Squamish so that'll get us into early stage of production within seven to 12 months because most turbine technology takes about three years to develop - the technology unit and also the testing - but this [turbine] has already got three years of testing behind it," said West.

Mayor Ian Sutherland met with West Thursday (Jan. 5) to discuss the proposal.

"The concept is very exciting and what we want to do now is start talking about the nuts and bolts of it," said Sutherland. "So how's it going to get done, how's it going to get paid for, how many jobs will it create in what time period, finding land locations and those sorts of things. So there's a lot of work to be done."

Woodfibre local union president Doug Muir also met with West Thursday (Jan. 5) just two days after the union held a meeting to discuss the opportunities for retraining.

"I was seeking direction from all of them to see how they felt about it," said Muir. "In the pulp and paper industry all you've heard in last number of years is dire straits, can't compete with Asia, Russia. We kind of settled on continuing to maybe not put quite as much focus on a new buyer because then people want to take their severance pay and start over. They were very interested in the wind generation project. They see it as at the beginning of a 50-year cycle, not at the end. The future of wind generation is all in front of it, not behind."

West said the turbine manufacturing plant would be constructed in two stages, which will result in a 350,000 square foot facility on an as yet unknown 25-acre area of Squamish. He said WestTech is not looking at the Woodfibre location because it would take $100 million to clean up the site. But he met with Woodfibre executives Thursday (Jan. 5) to discuss the acquisition of buildings and equipment for the plant.

The turbine plant is just one of the projects West has in mind for the area.

"The third proposal is to build a supporting research institute that would be part of the UBC, Simon Fraser, U Vic campus so that they'll be able to train individuals on alternate renewable energy and complete their disciplines," said West. "This will be a world renowned research centre about four floors, with about 8,000 feet per floor and it would be manned by professors etc. and by specialists on wind."

West said he's returning to Squamish Jan. 17 to speak directly with the union and he also hopes to present the proposal to Squamish residents.

"I would imagine that it's probably going to work toward an open house meeting so most people have the ability to find out what's going on rather than third party from the union," he said.

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