>In this second instalment of a three-part series, BIV examines the Northwest Transmission Line’s potential to generate opportunities for B.C.’s northern ports and concerns that new shipping business could end up in Alaskan hands. The first instalment of the series (issue 1116; March 15-21), looked at the project’s prospects for generating investment in the north. Instalment 3 will focus on the communities that stand to benefit from the power line and the business opportunities that could be created for them
By Jenny Wagler
In the northeastern B.C. town of Stewart, snug up against the Alaska border, the port operates just one day every six weeks, and it’s hard to scrape together enough kids for a hockey team.
“We don’t have a bank, we don’t have a drug store, we don’t have a clothing store,” said Dan Soucie, whose family runs Stewart Bulk Terminals and a small construction company. “I’ve been here my whole life, for 45 years, and it’s never been as slow as it is here now.”
Soucie said he’s watched the town shrink from 3,000 to “500, if we’re lucky,” as the forest industry waned and mills shut down.
Yet with the B.C. government’s approval last month of the Northwest Transmission Line, which promises to spark a flurry of new mining activity, Soucie said he’s hoping the fortunes of both the town and the port are poised to turn.
“I think it’s going to be huge for the whole northwest in the big picture, and it’s huge for the dock, too.”
He said the terminal is currently shipping copper concentrate from Huckleberry Mine Ltd.’s central B.C. Huckleberry mine plus the zinc, lead and copper concentrates from Yukon Zinc Corp.’s Southeast-Yukon Wolverine mine. But Soucie pointed out that the terminal still has the capacity for an additional five or six mines.
He said the terminal, anticipating new mining activity, is planning an expansion over the next year that would double its storage capacity.
While Stewart is laying the groundwork for the new shipping business it’s anticipating, the Prince Rupert Port Authority (PRPA) supports the new transmission line, but is not sure what that will mean for business.
“We’re fully supportive of the transmission line because it does have a positive impact in the whole corridor and will we benefit from that? Probably,” said PRPA manager of public affairs Maynard Angus.
He added that even if all the new anticipated shipping business ends up at Stewart, the PRPA would still support the Northwest Transmission Line as a way to help the north recover from the huge population losses it has suffered from downturns in the fishing and forestry sectors.
“When we hear of economic activity, it’s good for everybody because it brings the people back to the north,” Angus said. “It brings that skill force back to the north, and it just allows us to draw on that skill force.”
But if B.C.’s ports see only good potential from the Northwest Transmission Line, close to Stewart in Iskut, conservation adviser Jim Bourquin, founder of the Protect Our Ports Committee, is concerned that any gains in business for B.C.’s ports could be short-lived.
Bourquin is concerned that a current push from Alaska lobbyists for an Alaska-B.C. grid intertie (the link between the Alaska grid and the North American grid) could lay the groundwork for a cross-border road just north of Stewart and the possible construction of a new port at Bradfield, Alaska: direct competition for B.C.’s ports.
Approval of the Northwest Transmission Line has added new momentum to that push.
Bourquin formed Protect our Ports in 2003 when, he said, the City of Wrangell, Alaska, was pushing hard for the Bradfield Road.
Wrangell’s 2010 Comprehensive Plan, designed to guide the next decade or two of the city’s development, notes that a road connecting Wrangell to the Canadian transportation system has long been seen as an important economic development opportunity for Southeast Alaska.
It also states that the Bradfield Road plus a deep-water port on the Bradfield Canal would create the closest shipping point for B.C. mining projects Galore Creek, Mount Klappan and Red Chris.
Soucie said he strongly opposes the idea of the Bradfield Road and a port on the Bradfield Canal.
“If they were to build a road to another deep-sea facility then obviously there’d be some competition,” he said.
“And it’s really tough for a Canadian port to compete with an American port because our taxes are just so crazy in Canada.
But Angus said the possibility of Prince Rupert losing any business down the road to a Bradfield port was “a long shot.”
What could be less of a long shot, however, is Alaska connecting, at some point, to the B.C. grid.
Ernie Christian, board president of the Wrangell-based Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition (ACEC), said B.C.’s decision to approve the Northwest Transmission Line is great news for his coalition. He said the ACEC wants to export Alaskan power to B.C.: a plan that requires an intertie, likely between the Tyee Lake Hydro project on the Bradfield Canal and B.C.’s Forest Kerr hydroelectric project, slated to be operating by 2014 and connected to the B.C. grid.
Southeast Alaska, he said, has about 3,000 megawatts of hydropower that could potentially be developed – a number far in excess of what Alaska needs internally, even assuming it eventually builds out its grid to serve remote communities.
“We’re looking at developing a new economic sector in our local economies because we’re losing population and we’re trying to stabilize, get some good-paying jobs.”
Jim Strandberg, project manager with the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA), said the state is drafting a regional energy plan for southeast Alaska that will consider the possibility of an Alaska-B.C. intertie.
The AEA, he said, is keen on a public-private partnership to fund the intertie – possibly with private consortiums of Alaskan hydropower producers.
But he said Alaska will first have to look at energy prices and determine if there’s a business case for either exporting energy to B.C. or even importing the province’s energy.
“The agency is keeping beneficial and warm contacts with our brothers and sisters in B.C. and the power industry there to understand what the market is,” he said.
Meanwhile in B.C., government and BC Hydro officials indicated last year in a meeting with Alaskan officials that they weren’t contemplating interconnecting with Alaska “in the near term,” according to background information provided by the Ministry of Energy.
While the intertie idea nonetheless has some momentum, at least on the Alaska side, the Bradfield Road plan appears to have little impetus now.
“It’s been talked about for a long time,” Wrangell Mayor Jeremy Maxand said, adding that the state of Alaska would likely have to fund it.
“It’s going to really have to have some major economic significance if the state is going to pony up that cash, and I don’t want to be a pessimist, but it comes down to money and there’s not a lot of it right now.”