CRITICISMS OF DAM DENIED
B.C. Utilities Commission report discounts alternatives, farming effects
While doing serious damage to the credibility of B.C. Hydro this week, the utility commission review of Site C also raised doubts about some positions taken by critics of the controversial hydroelectric project.
The four-member panel discounted the oft-repeated claim — by activist-turned-cabinet minister Lana Popham among others — that the dam would flood enough land “to feed one million people in perpetuity.”
The commissioners determined that the claim is grounded in a questionable reading of a 1980 report to B.C. Hydro on the potential impact of Site C on development of a vegetable industry in the Peace River country.
The four-decades-old study concluded that although the reservoir behind the dam would submerge several thousand hectares of land suitable for growing vegetables, there was little prospect of developing a processing industry if the tract was retained in the agricultural base.
“A processing plant for vegetables in the Peace River Valley did not appear to be economic as it would require a market area with a population of roughly 1,200,000.” The current population of the Peace River Regional District is about 60,000.
Having disposed of that likelihood, the 1980 report went on to say that were the flooding to go ahead, there would be plenty of land left over for growing vegetables if any farmers chose to do so.
“Returns to growers from processing vegetables do not appear to be any better than returns from traditional crops such as grain and alfalfa. Existing farmers and landholders are unlikely to switch to processing vegetables as vegetable production would not improve their incomes.”
Summing up their reading of the findings on vegetable production, the members of the utility commission wrote: “This study is most certainly out of date. But the conclusion can be reached that while significant acreage capable of growing vegetables will disappear with Site C’s reservoir, there still remains ample land in the Peace River Valley to develop a vegetable industry if it is considered viable.”
That conclusion on the reduction in agricultural land is similar to the one reached in the joint review of the project, chaired by now-critic of Site C, Harry Swain.
“The permanent loss of the agricultural production of the Peace River Valley bottom lands is not, by itself and in the context of B.C. or western Canadian agricultural production, significant,” wrote Swain and colleagues, putting the flooding of some 3,800 hectares of agricultural land in a larger context.
The four members of the utilities commission similarly discounted the B.C. potential for developing geothermal power, as trumpeted by B.C. Green party Leader Andrew Weaver and others.
“There may actually be no geothermal potential,” wrote the commissioners. “The panel takes no position on whether any specific geothermal project may be commercially viable or whether any geothermal project will be commercially viable.”
Consequently, the panel included only two geothermal developments within an alternative portfolio of power projects that could potentially substitute for the cancellation of Site C. The largest was the Canoe Reach site near Valemount in the Rocky Mountain Trench, thought capable of producing 58 megawatts of continuous electrical power over a 30-year span. A smaller 15-megawatt project, being developed in partnership with the Kitselas First Nation near Lakelse Lake south of Terrace, also got the nod as perhaps having potential.
Other oft-mentioned alternatives did not fare so well. Natural-gas fired generation was for the most part discounted because of the effect on greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Wind farms earned their proper place in the final mix of alternatives. But even there the panel warned: “The cost of wind may be higher than estimated.”
Building on that theme, the commissioners cautioned against making too much of the alternatives (wind, geothermal, measures to reduce demand for power) that they put forward.
“Resource planning is a complex exercise,” they wrote, as a warning to anyone inclined to quote their suggestions as take-it-to-thebank alternatives to Site C. “This exercise is not a substitute for B.C. Hydro’s planning process. The alternative portfolio is illustrative only.”
There was also this in reply to the forecasts by Site C critic Robert McCullough and others inclined to extrapolate today’s low energy market prices well into the future.
“The panel notes that B.C. Hydro has not disputed McCullough’s characterization of current market prices. They are quite low and in the near future they are likely to stay low. However, the issue is not what prices are today or even what they will be in two or three years. What is at issue is what market prices are likely to be in 2024 and beyond. The panel is not persuaded that a reliance on a forward curve at a specific point in time is an accurate indicator of future long-term prices.”
Much as the commissioners cast doubt on Hydro’s forecasts, budgeting and management of Site C. At the end of 12 weeks they were not prepared to say whether it would be a better bargain for ratepayers to cancel the project or go back to square one on the alternatives.
“We take no position on which of the termination or completion scenarios has the greatest cost to ratepayers,” they wrote in a concluding paragraph directed to the cabinet as much as anyone. “We have provided a discussion of the risk implications of each alternative in order to assist in the evaluation.”
Over to you New Democrats for the decision. Make it a good one.
The panel takes no position on whether any specific geothermal project may be commercially viable or whether any geothermal project will be commercially viable.
B.C. UTILITIES COMMISSION, report