Activist fights the B.C. dam project
Helen Knott hopes to halt construction on sacred land, but minister says it’s too late
OTTAWA— Helen Knott, 28, believes the stories of her people are alive in the Peace River valley of northeastern British Columbia and fears they will be lost in the flood of a $8.8billion hydroelectric dam project.
“When I think about the valley, I think about stories,” Knott said as she described the 107 kilometres of land the project would flood, destroying farmland and sacred burial grounds, as well as areas Treaty 8 First Nations use for hunting, fishing, gathering medicines and other cultural reasons.
They often gather to tell those stories around the fire at the Rocky Mountain Fort, a protest camp Knott and others — mostly young indigenous women — set up Dec. 31to block the clearing of land to prepare for further construction of the BC Hydro Site C dam project.
“I see it and I feel it as a right to identity, that ability to tell those stories, that ability to connect with those lands and access the blood memories that exists, that would surface by being within that territory,” Knott, a social worker and community activist from Prophet River First Nation, B.C., said recently during a visit to Ottawa.
It is a way of viewing the world — and asserting rights within it — that is hard to fit within the bureaucratic box of environmental assessment processes, judicial reviews, circumscribed consultations with Aboriginal Peoples and the promise of 10,000 new jobs brought into the area.
Yet this view is what pushed Knott to set up the camp and become, quite literally, possibly the last thing standing between her land and the BC Hydro project.
And she has a question for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government she and local landowners argue could intervene to halt the project in a number of ways, including by revoking federal permits. “Where are you now?” Knott said. The previous Conservative government gave approval to the project, as did B.C., in October 2014 following a federal-provincial joint review, concluding the environmental and other effects the Site C dam would have were justified under the circumstances.
The new environment minister, Catherine McKenna, said Tuesday the project was already underway, but BC Hydro must meet requirements laid out by the environmental assessment.
“I have been and will continue to be engaged in discussions with indigenous leaders on how we can work together to ensure better consultation, environmental assessment and natural resource development,” McKenna said in the House of Commons during question period.
Meanwhile, Knott and the small group, allied with nearby farmers and other landowners whose homes and lifestyles are also at stake, could be cleared out in the near future if a British Columbia Supreme Court judge grants BC Hydro, a provincial Crown corporation, an injunction to do so. The hearing began Monday. “We took this step because we have an obligation to our customers to keep the project on-schedule and on-budget,” BC Hydro spokesman Craig Fitzsimmons wrote in an emailed statement Tuesday, adding he would not discuss further details while the matter is before the court.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark said last month that she wanted to push the Site C dam project “past the point of no return.”
That is exactly what Rob Botterell, the lawyer representing the First Nations and area landowners, fears will happen, noting BC Hydro plans to continue construction as challenges make their way through the courts.
“We are confident we are ultimately going to win, but that will be too late,” Botterell said during his visit to Ottawa with Knott last week.
B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett said the project already went through.
“We’re already past the point of no return,” Bennett said in an interview Tuesday, adding BC Hydro has already awarded $2.1 billion in contracts and will award another $1 billion by the end of the year.
“We’re well beyond a place where it would make any sense to consider not building the project,” he said, adding the province has done its due diligence and he does not expect the court to rule against the Site C dam.
“We are very confident we have done things right,” he said.