War and Peace, as well as a few ‘ damming’ words
Divisions re- emerge as multibilliondollar hydro project ramps up
One can presume that Hydro’s recent calls for expressions of interest from would- be contractors are more than speculative, and the utility has good reason to expect government will give it the green light ...
Some 50 years ago, as B. C. embarked on an era dominated by ambitious development of hydroelectric power, a member of the Opposition strode into the legislature to blast the then government for its ... well, let him tell it.
“Mr. Speaker, what is getting this Social Credit government in trouble with the people is their damn foolishness.”
Out of order, honourable member. Unparliamentary language. “The member will withdraw that,” ordered the Speaker.
But the member, then Liberal MLA Gordon Gibson ( senior, for those who remember his son, also a Liberal MLA) wasn’t quite ready to give ground.
“Mr. Speaker, I chose my words very carefully,” he replied, milking the moment, “I said that what was getting Social Credit into trouble with the people was their damn foolishness.”
Mr. Speaker didn’t realize he was being set up. Down came the gavel. Again he ordered the miscreant to withdraw. Time for the punchline.
“Mr. Speaker, perhaps you can help me,” returned Gibson. “I am searching for a word to describe a structure 600 feet high, half a mile wide that would hold back a river like the Peace.”
House exploded into laughter. Mr. Speaker, not willing to cut his losses, still demanded a withdrawal because clearly that wasn’t what Gibson meant at all.
“Oh yes, I did,” replied the MLA, extracting a second punchline from the exchange. “That’s what I was damning them for.”
Very damn funny honourable member. But from this great distance — the exchange took place in early 1963 — one is compelled to note that far from punishing the Socreds for their plans to dam the Peace and Columbia Rivers, the people would go on to re- elect them three more times.
Six decades on, with the Liberals themselves in power ( and Social Credit gone or, as some would have it, transformed into the Liberals) the province is poised for another era of damming, along with more than a few damns.
When I wrote this week about BC Hydro commencing the hunt for qualified contractors to build a proposed hydroelectric dam at Site C on the Peace, I soon heard about the full range of debate on the project.
One of the biggest controversies involves the way the dam would entail flooding a sizable tract of agricultural land. Hydro prefers to say the project won’t touch most of the more than two million hectares of agricultural land in the Peace. Only about 4,000 hectares would be rendered “unavailable” — the utility’s preferred euphemism for “permanently submerged under tonnes of water.”
Another group of critics asks if hydroelectric dams should not be considered an overpriced thing of the past. They note how the city of Calgary is building a gas- fired generating plant on a somewhat comparable scale to Site C ( 800 megawatts versus 1,100 megawatts) for about one quarter of the capital cost.
Hydro maintains that Site C is the preferred option because a hydroelectric dam has a much longer life than a gas- fired plant, and the latter is subject to fluctuations in energy prices.
That analysis is based in part on Hydro’s $ 8- billion cost estimate for Site C, now almost four years old. Still, the utility insists the projection is viable because it includes ample allowances for contingencies ($ 700 million), interest during construction ($ 1.6 billion) and inflation ($ 800 million).
Despite vocal opposition to the project within the affected region and elsewhere in the province, Hydro also claims “strong levels of support” for Site C. Most of those responding to opinion polls posted on the corporation website either supported the project or were willing to accept it under specified circumstances. Only a small fraction were outright opposed.
Pretty much every claim that Hydro makes about Site C is readily debatable. But critical to the utility’s ability to proceed is the apparent support from the B. C. Liberal government, which hailed Site C as a “cost- effective alternative” in a review of Hydro conducted shortly after Christy Clark took office.
“The rationale for moving forward with Site C is cost — ongoing supply with dependable capacity and compliance with the Clean Energy Act,” concluded the review.
“The new energy supply would be unaffected by market fluctuations that impact the cost of natural gas and carbon- generated power, so Site C unit costs should not result in spikes in price. Also, as the third project on the Peace River, Site C would take advantage of water already stored to deliver firm energy, thereby allowing for a reliable source of power.”
On that reading, one can presume that Hydro’s recent calls for expressions of interest from would- be contractors are more than speculative, and the utility has good reason to expect that the government will give it the green light to proceed.
Not to say there aren’t other obstacles, including incomplete environmental reviews, the prospect of legal action by First Nations, and the volatile economics of the energy sector that once before persuaded the province to mothball Site C.
Those factors, in turn, will tell whether B. C. is about to embark on another era of dam construction, or just another damn controversy.
Thanks and a tip of the hat to Pat McGeer, the former B. C. MLA, cabinet minister and still active medical researcher. That damn/ dam anecdote quoted above is taken from Politics in Paradise, his highly readable those- were- the- days book about B. C. politics in the 1960s.