SITE C DAM GETS THE GO AHEAD
Price tag soars to $16 billion, completion delayed to 2025
Geotechnical issues, delays and the COVID -19 pandemic have pushed the price tag for B.C. Hydro's Site C dam to $16 billion, but Premier John Horgan said that cancelling it now would be too big a hit to taxpayers.
Horgan's government gave the same explanation for continuing Site C in 2017 when about $2 billion had already been spent. Today, with about $6 billion spent, Horgan maintained that continuing with the dam remains “the right decision.”
“Cancelling Site C when it was half done would have meant laying off 4,500 workers just as we're coming out of the economic impact of the pandemic,” Horgan said on Friday. “It would have left us with a $10-billion debt (with) nothing to show for it.”
B.C. Hydro customers would have been on the hook for that debt to the tune of $216 a year in average increased rates, starting immediately, which “was also something that we were not prepared to do,” instead of paying for the $16-billion cost over a 70- to 100-year life span of the dam.
Delays also mean that Site C's completion will be a year behind schedule in 2025, but will be done so safely, Horgan said, despite significant technical problems with the dam's foundation discovered in 2018 and subject of two reviews.
Horgan commissioned a former deputy minister, Peter Milburn, to review project oversight and a summary of his findings was also released Friday, along with the technical review of engineers John France and Kaare Hoeg.
France and Hoeg's report approved Hydro's technical fix to the foundation problems that will involve the installation of pilings designed to shore up Site C's foundation.
The project will have to meet the requirements of 17 recommendations for improvement, made by Millburn and adopted by cabinet, including enhanced oversight.
Energy Minister Bruce Ralston also replaced B.C. Hydro chairman Ken Peterson with veteran civil servant Doug Allen to bring new leadership to the electric utility.
Environmental groups and First Nations condemned the NDP decision to continue the dam, while business representatives said it was the right decision.
B.C. Green party Leader Sonia Furstenau called Friday's decision a continuation of successive governments' poor decision making with an “astonishingly terrible business case in any circumstances.”
Horgan defended Site C as an asset “not for tomorrow, or next month, or next year, (but) for the next 100 years,” providing electricity that would help B.C. cut its carbon emission.
Furstenau, however, argued “they could have made the decision to cancel at this point, and I don't think that they're being completely upfront about the potential implications for finances.”
Horgan said his government “inherited a project that we wouldn't have started,” but are doing their best to live up to obligations taken on by the former Liberal government.
Opposition critic Tom Shypitka, the B.C. Liberal MLA for Kootenay East, said government made the right decision to continue, but must be accountable for much of the ballooning costs.
“We started (Site C) and were happy to start,” Shypitka said, given its “clean green” electricity for future development, but the NDP has been in charge since 2017 with
Cancelling Site C when it was half done would have meant laying off 4,500 workers.
“unnecessary delays.”
“Somebody has to take ownership of that and it's got to be the government in power,” Shypitka said.