PEOPLE POWER is a six-chaper 50 minute DVD designed to help activists launch grassroots community-based campaigns to protect public power and the environment.
Why I support Site C, with conditions: We need the new power source and this is a clean, reliable one. But the people of B.C. mu
Posted April 24th, 2010
My support for Site C is relatively recent. In the past, like others who opposed it, I felt it would be bad for people in the region and would cause unnecessary environmental damage.
Building the Bennett Dam and the Peace Canyon Dam created misery for the first nations who were dispossessed of their land while many others were deprived of their farms and houses as well.
For decades some first nations did not even have access to electricity from the system. The human toll was awful and the river and its ecosystem were affected permanently.
My mind was changed about Site C primarily because of the damage caused by the B.C. government's policy on electricity.
This policy limits the new generation of electricity to private power producers, with the only additions to public power generation coming from adding capacity at existing dams. While some new capacity has been installed in B.C. facilities in recent years, the government has relied primarily on promoting private run-of-river hydro projects for new supply.
The private and piecemeal planning that occurred through this incremental privatization of electricity has encouraged a disastrous plunder of B.C.'s rivers.
It is also expensive. BC Hydro pays absurdly high prices for acquiring power, with guaranteed purchase contracts for up to 30 years. This means taxpayers are paying for private sector investment.
The nasty bit, though, is that the province will never own these assets and the public will never benefit from this massive subsidy to the private sector. More than 8,000 river sites have been identified by BC Hydro as possible areas for future development to provide up to 12,000 megawatts of power. These will not all be developed, but the potential for the continuing destruction of rivers is possible.
All energy production causes environmental damage. The main question in assessing Site C is how its costs to the environment and people stand in relationship to using other energy sources.
The province has resource options that most jurisdictions do not have. It can meet energy needs from hydro, gas, coal, wind and sun. Coal and gas produce greenhouse gas emissions that make their use undesirable. Wind, sun and run-of-river hydro projects, as most people in B.C. now know, do not provide reliable or "firm" power. They provide power only when the conditions are right, not when it is needed. Even this soft power may not be available in the future, since private power can be exported. BC Hydro, which is mandated to ensure future supply of electricity for the province, then needs to find sources of firm power, or power that is available when needed in B.C.
Few people realize that the private power projects are often massive. One proposed project, at Bute Inlet, is in some respects comparable to Site C, but is much more environmentally damaging. It covers 17 interconnected hydro facilities over three drainage areas and has a generating capacity about the same as Site C, but will require much more extensive additional transmission lines.
And, its power is not firm power. In comparison, Site C will be situated on a river area below two dams and will not have the massive reservoir that characterizes many of the largest dams in B.C. But it will enable BC Hydro to obtain an additional 900 MW of firm power from the Williston reservoir. According to one eminent University of B.C. geologist who has been monitoring the Peace River for the past 40 years, the river will change, but it does rebuild and not all change constitutes a loss. This makes sense to me, particularly when comparing building Site C with the type of hydro development that has been occurring through the private power initiatives.
My support for Site C is not unconditional, though.
Site C should be owned by British Columbians exclusively through BC Hydro, just as are other large hydro assets. So far there are no assurances from the government on this.
It should make economic and environmental sense and the upcoming reviews need to be transparent in this regard. The compensation and mitigation for first nations and other local residents need to be socially just.
All bids for future run-of-river private power should be eliminated.
When a new power project is built within the public sector it can and should receive the kind of oversight that is normal in a coordinated system. Site C could serve B.C. very well into the future, but only if the people of B.C. own the asset.
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My support for Site C is relatively recent. In the past, like others who opposed it, I felt it would be bad for people in the region and would cause unnecessary environmental damage.
Marjorie Griffin Cohen is a professor of political economy at Simon Fraser University. She is a former board member of BC Hydro and was the founding chair of Citizens for Public Power.