First, I think Loyalist Township has been taking care of Amherst Island's infrastructure just fine to date. Of course improvements can always be made, assuming the money is available and the improvements make sense. The proposed project would involve an investment of several hundred million dollars into Amherst Island and some part of that would be for infrastructure improvements.

Most of that would be for roads, as heavier, wider and more level roads would be needed. Better roads would help all of us drive faster, safer and more comfortably than we do now, and would certainly make moving agricultural equipment and trucks somewhat easier than it now is.

There would also be a new dock and connecting road, as the current ferry and ferry dock are not sufficient to carry or land either the turbines or the towers. There's been some speculation about this project providing front-loading ferry docks, but there's nothing like that promised and I don't see any reason the developer would bother doing it, other than as an incentive (aka bribe) for the township. Where would the new dock go? My first guess would be off the township right-of-way on Kerr Point, but they'll need a fair amount of land at the dock just to stage all the equipment, and I'm not sure it would be available on the Point. Regardless, I'm sure they'll find some way of locating it.

Would this dock be available to the regular ferry after the project is installed? Perhaps, but the developer has to have some way of maintaining and then decommissioning the equipment, so my guess is that it will never be available for normal ferry service. And this assumes the Township would even want to move the dock away from Stella - which would probably kill the few remaining businesses there.

There would also be a new underwater power cable from the Island to the grid on the mainland. Some people might wonder if this new cable would improve the delivery of electricity to the Island. My guess is no, this new cable would be used only to transmit power into the grid. Our current cable, which in my opinion is perfectly adequate, would continue distributing power from the grid out to the Island as it now does. In other words, none of the energy produced on the Island would be directly consumed on the Island. This really doesn't matter, except for the small transmission losses across the channel.

Would the Township use the extra money to better maintain the Island's infrastructure? It's not clear, from reading the revenue page, that there would be any extra money at all. It's also not clear to me if the larger roads and heavier loads would lead to a savings or extra expense. In any event, I'm not aware of any promises the Township has made concerning this, and I can't think of any reason the Township would undertake this extra expense.

So the net improvements, if any, would be minor, mostly the roads.