DAMS
Canadians have invested an awful lot of national pride in their hydroelectric power. during the Quiet revolution in the 1960s, the Quebec Liberal government printed propaganda posters calling their province’s hydro stores the “keys to the kingdom.” People in british Columbia never get tired of trumpeting the fact that their cities are powered by clean, renewable power, all secured thanks to an aggressive 20th-century dam-building spree.
despite ever-increasing demands on the Canadian electrical grid, whenever ground is broken of late on a new hydroelectric dam it’s usually not too long until it turns into a byword for boondoggle. b.c.’s Site C dam saw ballooning costs coupled with pushback from landowners and First Nations earmarked for relocation. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project nearly doubled in cost and sparked an official government inquiry. In Manitoba, the just-opened Keeyask generating station came on board two years late, more than $2 billion over budget.
Some of the dam-building malaise is for good reason: Many of Canada’s most ambitious dams were built at a time when flooding out vast numbers of people just didn’t carry the paperwork it does now. but Canada is definitely getting far less bang for its buck from hydroelectricity than it once did. Site C, for instance, will generate less than one-half of the electricity of the province’s famed W.A.C. bennet dam while costing more than twice as much.