Site C dam, not Trans Mountain, is the worry

Environmental impact is greater than any other project, Sarah Cox says.

As all eyes focus on the Kinder Morgan pipeline fracas, a resource project with far larger financial and environmental consequences for British Columbians is unfolding largely out of sight and out of mind: the Site C dam on the Peace River.

According to more than 200 of Canada’s leading scholars, Site C will have more significant adverse environmental effects than any project ever examined in the history of Canada’s environmental assessment act.

Large dams have irreversible ecological consequences. Among those, Site C will destroy habitat for more than 100 species vulnerable to extinction, including bird and butterfly species.

To proceed with such an environmentally destructive project, B.C. Hydro is required to adopt “mitigation measures,” some of which are scientifically unproven and have jaw-dropping costs. For instance, B.C. Hydro customers will foot a $127-million bill to send bull trout past the Site C dam in trucks for 100 years so they can reach their spawning grounds.

That amount of money would build nine elementary schools in the Lower Mainland.

Indeed, the sky seems to be the limit when it comes to the price tag for Site C, started by the B.C. Liberals and recommitted to by the NDP on the grounds that the project was past “the point of no return.”

But when it comes to the public interest we are far from the point of no return. There’s still time to reverse direction, something other Canadian provinces facing hefty cost overruns on large dam projects dearly wish they’d done.

Site C’s price tag, initially pegged at $6.6 billion when it was announced in 2010, soared by yet another $2 billion last fall to $10.7 billion, with six years of construction left to go and still no sign that bedrock — necessary to anchor the dam structure — has been found.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, a national inquiry is underway to examine why construction of the boondoggle Muskrat Falls dam proceeded. Each household in that province will now pay an average of $1,800 more in annual hydro bills for a dam whose costs have more than doubled to $12.7 billion.

And Manitoba Hydro recently asked permission to impose annual eight-percent hydro rate increases, compounding each year for six years, to help pay for the significantly over-budget Keeyask dam project under construction on the Nelson River. That full request was denied.

But it’s only a matter of time before ratepayers face the inevitable day of reckoning.

As with Site C, Keeyask’s energy isn’t needed domestically and export contracts haven’t been secured. So power will be sold on spot markets at a loss, leaving hapless hydro customers to make up the difference.

Site C’s power will cost up to $120 per megawatt hour, compared with $37 per megawatt hour that Alberta has just paid for new wind power.

It was one thing to build destructive dam projects in the 1960s, when affordable, renewable-energy options weren’t within our grasp.

But by any metric it makes no sense today.

The price of much more agile solar and wind projects is dropping. Geothermal power needs only political will to become established. Such realities threaten to upend the traditional electricity sector, leaving utilities with stranded assets.

Graham Lane, the former head of Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board, is among a growing chorus of voices calling for a halt to construction of the Keeyask dam.

Keeyask has incurred $4 billion to $4.5 billion in sunk costs, compared with just over $2 billion for the Site C dam at last count.

In Lane’s words, “it’s never too late to stop.”

The point of no return? It’s in front of B.C. Hydro customers, not behind.