#bc hydro

The B.C. government has commissioned two expert reports to determine if BC Hydro’s proposed solution to the Site C dam’s geotechnical problems is safe, Premier John Horgan disclosed at a press conference on Thursday.

Horgan said the government will not make a decision about whether or not to cancel the publicly funded hydro project on B.C.’s Peace River until it has the two reports in hand.

“They’ll be made public when we have them, and when cabinet’s had an opportunity to digest them.”

The Premier said there are several “decision points ahead” for cabinet, but did not elaborate on what they are or when the safety reports may be delivered.

“Before we release information to the public, we want to make sure we have all of the details,” he said in response to questions from Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer. “We do not want to have half-measures at a critical point in a large industrial project that is well advanced.”

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Clint Goyette has spent a lot of time on the rivers around Squamish, B.C., over the last two decades as a fishing guide, but even he was shocked to see hundreds of dead fish lying in pools along the Cheakamus River recently.

The spawning pink salmon, on their way to lay thousands of eggs, became trapped in isolated pools and died as water levels in Cheakamus River rapidly fell — the result of a nearby BC Hydro facility decreasing the river's flow, known as ramping, at the end of September.

"I was out guiding the day of the [river level] reduction," said Goyette, who runs Valley Fishing Guides in Squamish, about 65 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Goyette said he ran into BC Hydro crews out on the river surveying the damage, one of whom warned him about what he was about to encounter further up the river.  

"I passed one of their crew … and he said, 'There's hundreds of dead fish up there so don't be surprised,'" Goyette said.

Biologist Chessy Knight, who captured photos of the dead fish on Sept. 20, estimates about 300 fish were killed when the water levels in the Cheakamus River fell by about half over the course of a day.

The pink salmon were trapped in shallow pools and couldn't return to deeper, flowing sections of the river.

"This has been happening for many, many years on the Cheakamus," said Knight, who's also president of the Squamish River Watershed Society.  

"But this is the first time that we saw adult spawners also affected by these flow manipulations."

A new independent report commissioned by B.C.’s energy minister concludes BC Hydro ratepayers will shell out at least $16.2 billion over the next two decades to pay for electricity they don’t need.

That’s because the previous BC Liberal government forced the Crown corporation to sign decades-long contracts guaranteeing it would buy overpriced electricity from independent power producers (IPPs), many owned by BC Liberal donors.

The waste will cost each ratepayer about $4,000 over 20 years, for energy that’s out of sync with when it’s needed, because IPP run-of-river operations surge with power during months B.C. is already flush with energy, and not the peak use times at the heights of summer and winter.

Somewhere up there Rafe Mair is smacking clouds together to make them thunder: “I told you so!”

Tell us he did, here in the pages of The Tyee, many times. Here in 2009, for example. And here and here in 2010.

Excerpted from a piece Mair wrote in September 2013 is this:

“We British Columbians are the ongoing and apparently disinterested victims of a world-class deception and it has gone on since 2002 when Gordon Campbell announced British Columbia’s new Energy Plan.

BC Hydro said December’s windstorm was the most damaging in the Crown utility’s history.

The Dec. 20 storm left more than 750,000 customers without power, making it larger than the August 2015 windstorm that affected the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, and the 2006 windstorm that hit Vancouver Island and devastated Stanley Park in Vancouver.

BC Hydro said in a report that the storm was unlike any other they’ve seen. Winds topped 100 km/h in some areas with gusts coming from several directions, including the southeast, south and southwest. In addition, the strong winds were preceded by several spells of heavy rainfall, which destabilized trees.

The storm damaged a record amount of hydro infrastructure, including 86,000 metres of damaged power line, 390 damaged power poles and 3,200 pieces of electrical equipment.

British Columbia residents can expect to pay over eight per cent more on their BC Hydro bills over the next five years.

The government says the first increase of 1.8 per cent will be implemented April 1, if the B.C. Utilities Commission approves the added expense.

The announcement comes after a report commissioned by the NDP government says BC Hydro customers will pay $16 billion over the next two decades because the Crown utility was pressured by the former Liberal government to sign contracts with independent power producers.

The report says the Liberals manufactured an urgent need for electricity but restricted BC Hydro from producing it, forcing the utility to turn to private producers and sign long-term contracts at inflated prices.

The B.C. government has only one responsible course of action to take on the controversial Site C dam, and that is to cancel the project, remediate the site and pursue cheaper and more flexible energy sources to meet long-term demand, according the former head of BC Hydro.

In a highly critical report submitted to the British Columbia Utilities Commission’s inquiry into BC Hydro’s Site C project, Marc Eliesen, former president and CEO of the Crown corporation, lambasted the former BC Liberal government for weakening regulatory oversight and failing to provide full financial disclosure on the economics of mega-dams.

Eliesen, who also chaired Manitoba Hydro and served as CEO of Ontario Hydro, does not mince words in the report.

“The final investment decision made in late 2014 to proceed with Site C was a reckless and irresponsible decision made by the former Government of British Columbia and the Board of Directors of BC Hydro. Both the former government and BC Hydro’s Board abdicated their fiduciary responsibility to the ratepayers and taxpayers of this province.

“BC Hydro ratepayers do not need and cannot afford the electricity capacity associated with Site C even if the project is completed on time and on budget,” added Eliesen in his report.