The decades-long battle over BC Hydro’s Site C dam proposal for the Peace River is once again underway, as the first day of public hearings on Hydro's latest push for the project began in Fort St. John on Monday.
More than 200 people stuffed into the Pomeroy Hotel in for the hearings’ opening remarks, including a hundred-strong contingent from the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, which paraded into the ballroom beating drums and carrying flags.
Following a prayer and performance from the Doig River Drummers, Treaty 8 members stood before the three-member Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency panel, laying out an array of moose antlers and melons, jars of soil and berries, animal hides, photos of ancestors and of the valley itself.
Signs implored the panel to “keep an open mind” and to “listen when an elder speaks to you.”
“We did this to help set the tone of how we feel about this,” Saulteau band councillor Tammy Watson told the panel. “The cultural piece hasn't been talked about (in Hydro’s environmental assessment).”
Hydro is making its third case to build Site C since 1982. It aims to build the 60-metre-high earth dam about seven kilometres from downtown Fort St. John, along with a 1,100-megawatt generating station, to harness the flows of the Peace River to meet a forecast 40% jump in domestic electricity demand over the next 20 years.
B.C.’s population is expected to jump by more than a million people by then, and Site C would add enough power to the provincial energy grid to feed about 450,000 homes with power each year.
Hydro, on this go around, has held some 120 consultation meetings with communities and landowners, including 40 meetings with aboriginal groups across B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories, said Susan Yurkovich, who serves as executive vice-president for Site C.
“Building Site C is the right thing to do so our customers can enjoy the benefits of domestic… renewable energy for years to come,” said Yurkovich.
The dam, with its $7.9 billion price tag, promises to add some $3 billion to the provincial GDP during its construction, along with some 33,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs, according to the utility.
However, the project remains a sensitive topic for several First Nations groups, which say the dam’s reservoir will wash away thousands of years of their history in the valley.
Meanwhile, farm owners argue it will mean the largest single erasure of high-quality farmland in the history of the province’s coveted Agricultural Land Reserve.
On top of this, other critics say the cost of building Site C will be a tough pill to swallow for BC Hydro’s ratepayers, and that the province has other, cheaper options at its disposal.
Presenters on Monday afternoon settled straight into the day’s business, addressing the actual need for the project and potential alternatives. Speakers pushed BC Hydro to reconsider the use of thermal energy, and even pushed for the building of cogeneration plants, which it was argued could be done at a fraction of the cost.
Dr. Marvin Shaffer, an economist and public policy expert representing the Peace Valley Environment Association, said the decommissioning of the Burrard Thermal plant in Port Moody has largely helped drive the need for Site C, removing some 6,100 gigawatt-hours of potential energy from the grid. Keeping Burrard online would mean Hydro wouldn’t need to build a new energy source until 2033 or beyond.
“That didn’t have to be retired in the manner it was. It could have been maintained,” said Shaffer.
The province decided to shutter the facility, which generates electricity using natural gas, largely over pollution concerns, and because it was generating only a fraction of its 900-megawatt capacity. (As part of the province’s Clean Energy Act, Hydro must generate 93% of its energy from clean, renewable resources.)
However, area residents Richard Koechl and Mike Kroecher argued any dirty carbon emissions from gas power plants could be recouped and reused. They noted the Shepard Energy Centre, currently under construction in Calgary, which has companies “chomping at the bit” to take the facility’s carbon emissions to reuse in building materials and even create more fuel.
The two used the Shepard project as a model of the future of energy, producing as much energy as Site C for a fraction of the cost – about $1.3 billion – they say, with a higher energy efficiency rating and a much smaller land footprint.
Chairing the Site C review panel is Dr. Harry Swain, who holds a PhD in economic geography, and served for 22 years in the federal government between 1971 and 1995, before joining the University of Victoria.
He’s joined by engineer James Mattison, who at one point served as assistant deputy minister and comptroller of water rights with the Ministry of Environment, and Jocelyne Beaudet, who also served as a member of a joint review panel for the Eastmain 1-A/Rupert Hydroelectric Project in Quebec.
The panel poked and prodded Hydro’s energy forecasts, the costs of the projects and BC Hydro’s plan to pay for it, and the results of Hydro’s many conservation and efficiency programs.
In his welcoming remarks to the panel, Fort St. John councillor Larry Evans noted the project has been top of mind for Peace Region residents for decades, and building a dam has far-reaching implications, not just during the length of the project’s proposed construction period, but for the lifetime of the communities.
Evans said his City Council has been working hard to understand what the project will mean for the local economy and quality of life for area residents. If built, the dam will be barely a ten-minute drive away from downtown Fort St. John.
“We are not a product of our circumstances, but a product of our decisions,” he said, borrowing a quote from American author Stephen Covey.
Hearings exploring the need for Site C and its alternatives resume today. Among those scheduled to speak are the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association and the Clean Energy Association of B.C.
