British Columbia

Revived Site C stirs renewed protest

By SEAN GRIFFIN
Six years after the Public Utilities Com-
mission, faced with a barrage of environ-
mental opposition to the project, toid B.C.
Hydro that its Site C dam was not neces-
sary, the controversial hydro power dam on

the Peace River is back on Hydro’s drawing
_ board.

The opposition has not abated over the —

years — if anything, it has intensified —
but both the provincial government and
B.C. Hydro are moving methodically
towards a start on the controversial project.
And both are acting as if all the environ-
mental issues were resolved during the last
round of hearings in 1982 and all that is
required is to prove a need for the 900
moos of power that Site C would pro-
vide.

On that score, B.C. Hydro’s chairman
Larry Bell and Energy Minister Jack Davis
have both been promoting the Crown cor-
poration’s 20-year resource plan which sees
energy consumption doubling over the next
two decades. Hydro has also pointed to a
4-5 per cent growth in electrical demand
since 1986.

Davis effectively laid out the govern-
ment’s course when he told reporters last
month: “At that rate, we’ll need Site C by
the year 2000.”

Given the seven-year lead time usually
needed for dam completion, that means a
start on construction by 1993. That in turn
means licensing by 1990 — and Hydro
seems already well on its way toward that
deadline.

The Crown utility is currently spending
$7 million on soil sampling, road building
and geological work at the site, and the
creation of a “‘mini-dam” is also reportedly
going ahead.

And that site work, coupled with Envir-
onment Minister Bruce Strachan’s announce-
ment last week that public hearings on the
environmental issues involved “are unne-
cessary,” has environmentalists and area res-

Peace River valley Fort St. John; map (inset) shows location of proposed dam.

idents particularly worried.

The danger is that the government will
sell the project on the basis of export sales
and jobs for Northern residents — and
bypass the public hearing process.

“Tt would be a disaster if the land in this
valley were flooded and we’re very con-
cerned that it may be going ahead without
an opportunity for the public to have a say,”
said Ruth Darnall, chair of the Peace Valley
Environmental Association which has
spearheaded the opposition to the Site C
project.

In an effort to put a public face on the
process, B.C. Hydro has held a series of

Continued from page 1

Cullis, wife of noted geneticist David
Suzuki, warned that as the small trees
in reforested areas replace old forest,
the ability of the forest to produce
oxygen is diminished.

Vancouver Island woodlot owner
Merv Wilkinson said monoculture —
the current method of planting only
one type of tree in
reforestation — decreases the ability of
forests to regenerate.

Bill Lightbown, a former president
of the United Native Nations, said the
question of Native land claims must be
the top priority in addressing forest
usage.

Natives will participate on regional
boards deciding forest use, but,
“You're going to have make sure
you’ve got good representation on
those regional boards, and our people
will retain and absolutely insist upon
the right of veto on those committees,”
he said.

“The reality is that the veto would
only be used if there are people on
those committees who do not have the
well-being of the land and (use of) the
resources for the best interests of all of
the people.”

In Port Alberni, David White,
silviculture editor of Forest Planning
Canada, told a forum that soil
degradation and a poor timber return
on secondary growth are key problems
resulting from the corporate control of
B.C.’s forests.

Forest forum planned

BILL LIGHTBOWN ... Natives must
have a right to veto.

About 40 people rallied outside Port

Alberni’s local Ministry of Forests
_ Office.

In Campbell River, people marched
into the local ministry office to talk
with officials.

In the Lower Mainland, the
Wholistic Forestry Association plans a
major forum at Robson Square in the
next few months. Organizer Sunee
Lewis said some 24 groups, including
wood unions, have been approached.

The association calls for alternatives
to present forestry practices such as
mixed silviculture, selective harvesting
and public control of forest
management.

information meetings in various centres,
including Fort St. John, Dawson Creek,
Hudson Hope and Chetwynd and recently
opened a publicity office in Fort St. John.

Darnall noted that most of the people
who spoke up at the meetings “were in
opposition to the project.” But that has not
deterred Hydro chairman Bell who last
month urged members of the Dawson
Creek Chamber of Commerce to write let-
ters supporting the project.

Strachan also told reporters last week, in
reply to a call from NDP leader Mike Har-
court for new environmental hearings on
the project, that the issue had been covered
“extensively” in the 1982 hearings and that
further public review was unnecessary.

“That’s absolutely foolish and an affront
to the people of British Columbia,’ NDP
energy critic Anne Edwards responded in
an interview from her Kootenay consti-
tuency office. ‘It denies people the right to
make a statement about this project.
They’ve never even had a right to have any
input into Hydro’s 20-year plan.”

Edwards emphasized that the Public Util-
ities Commission did not make any deter-
mination of the environmental issues when
it rejected B.C. Hydro’s application for Site
C construction in 1983. It merely ruled that
Hydro had not demonstrated a need for the
power that Site C would generate.

“We should at least have new hearings on
need,” Edwards said, “but it should be need
in relation to the environmental standards
of today, not in 1982 terms,” she said.

Edwards had originally called for public
hearings in September, noting that the
Socreds’ “out-of touch attitudes towards
our environment may not have changed in
the last 10 years but the concerns of British
Columbians have.”

The environmental impact of the $4.2
billion Site C dam is much the same as it was
in 1982: it would flood 4,600 hectares of
land in the area, affecting wildlife stocks and
destroying some of the only Class | farm-
land in the northern area of the province.
The Peace River Valley maintains a micro-
climate that supports crops that cannot be
grown elsewhere in the region.

What is different from 1982 is the height-
ened public awareness of environmental
issues — and the Socred government clearly
does not want public hearings that would
play to that new awareness.

But both Hydro’s and the government’s
avoidance of the public spotlight is also

because Site C cannot be justified on .

need — unless you disregard conservation
measures, the current level of export sales to

the U.S. and the expected return of Colum-
bia River downstream benefits.

Energy Minister Davis has insisted that
Site C would be built to service provincial
needs alone and that if there are further
export sales they will be met by private
utilities. But that ignores Hydro’s current
export commitments — virtually all of the

- power from the most recent hydro project,

the Revelstoke Dam, is for export to the
U.S., for example — and it enables the
government to privatize energy generation
in the province while effectively continuing
with a policy of building dams for export.

But a key component on the energy pic-
ture that has been deliberately left out by
both Hydro and the Socred government is
the downstream benefit from dams on the
Columbia, the first of which could be
returned to Canada in 1998 — two years
before Hydro and government planners
claim Site C is needed.

Ina series of parallel agreements with the
Columbia River Treaty, B.C. sold its down-
stream benefits — power generated in the
U.S. asa result of water stored behind Can-
adian treaty dams — to the U.S. for a 30-
year period, beginning with the completion
date of each dam.

The first agreement comes up in 1998,
with further agreements scheduled to expire
over the following five years. The province
could negotiate the return of the power,
which totals some 480 megawatts, and thus
add to its energy reserves without further
construction.

But Hydro and the government have
refused to consider that option, deciding
instead to use the downstream benefits as a
bargaining lever in negotiating further
export sales to the United States.

“Hydro hasn’t even considered the
downstream benefits in its 20-year plan,”
Edwards noted... ..

Nor has B.C. Hydro given conservation’
the serious attention it should have,
Edwards and Darnall noted.

Significantly, Hydro has just announced
its application for a nine-per-cent hike in
Hydro rates, claiming that the increase is
“for policy reasons” to encourage conserva-
tion.

But the rate hike will not change Hydro’s
policy of providing bulk power at reduced
rates to industry or its special discount sales
to mining and other resource companies.

Edwards added that beyond “some glitzy
TV ads,” B.C. Hydro’s “Powersmart”
energy conservation program does not
really tackle the conservation issue seriously.
“And if Hydro and the government are still
out looking for export markets for power, it
tells me that they’re not into conservation
mode,” she said.

Darnall said that studies in the U.S. sug-
gest that far more could be achieved by
conservation than Hydro has considered,
obviating the need for the Site C dam. She
added that the Crown corporation should
devote far more of its financial resources to
conservation research.

“With the information that is available
on conservation and the new technology,
it’s terrible that this government wants to
flood another river vailey,” she said.

“But we’re not just worried about the
destruction of the valley,” she said, “we're
also concerned about the debt that the peo-
ple of B.C. would have to bear if this project
goes ahead.”

As part of its campaign against the mega-
project, Darnall said, the PVEA is seeking
to commission an independent study of the
province’s power needs.

The PVEA has also been alerting groups
around the province to B.C. Hydro’s
revived plans for the project which until
now have proceeded relatively quietly.

But more than anything, she said, the
government should consult the public
before the project proceeds any further.

“We must have public hearings,” she
said.

Pacific Tribune, October 30, 1989 e 3