Mississauga is trying to eliminate a smoggy past and make a hard u-turn toward a green, dense and environmentally sustainable future.

Nowhere is the drastic contrast between past and future more blinding than the shores of Lake Ontario.

Visitors to South Mississauga in the past were confronted by an enormous, coal burning plant with a giant set of smokestacks that belched carbon ash and smoke into the surrounding air. The environmental monstrosity that was the Lakeview Generating Station was eventually torn down in 2006. But not before the surrounding land was contaminated after decades of pollution.

Pioneering work by the late Jim Tovey, Mississauga councillor for Ward 1, saw plans for a different gas power generator scuppered and the land given over for housing, green space and cultural uses. Tovey, reverently remembered in his neighbourhood, worked with locals to create a medium density community project that would reopen the lake to residents and build housing covered in parkland and rooted in environmentalism. 

One idea he floated, after a research trip to Sweden, was a district energy system to power the entire area. 

District energy is a community-geared system where cooling, heating and hot water is pooled, rather than being produced per building. The early plan for its integration into the Lakeview project is to utilize effluent water from a sewage treatment plant immediately to its east. 

“District Energy Systems (DES) are thermal grids that distribute hot and cold water to various buildings in a community. Buildings on DES have no boilers, chillers or cooling towers. All of their heating and cooling is provided by the DES from a centralized thermal energy plant,” a document shared by the project’s developer, Lakeview Community Partners (LCP), explains. 

But, after several faceoffs where the developer fiddled with the core principles of the project, local community voices are now sceptical. 

The original proposal for Inspiration Lakeview, dreamed up by Tovey and his community, suggested 5,200 units and limited height near the waterfront. Once the land was sold to the developer by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), heights and the number of units skyrocketed to the dismay of residents. 

Locals fear the plan for district energy could suffer the same hijacking. 

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