Preliminary Report on Site C should be posted here later on today
Site C: Unfortunately 4 Billion Dollars already committed by Liberals was too much to ignore
Wed, 2017-09-20 17:34
#502
Fri, 2017-10-06 20:49
#503
Site C Dam $600 Million Over Budget, Will Miss River Diversion Timeline, Says BC Hydro CEO
BC Hydro’s new CEO Chris O’Riley has written a letter to the B.C. Utilities Commission stating that the crown corporation will not meet the timeline for river diversion for the Site C dam, which will add $610 million to the project’s price tag.
“BC Hydro has encountered some geotechnical and construction challenges on the project and the risk to the river diversion timeline has now materialized,” O’Riley wrote.
“Based on the recent completion of a constructability review and an executive meeting with our Main Civil Works contractor on September 27, 2017, we have now determined that we will not be able to meet the current timeline for river diversion in 2019.”....
Mon, 2017-10-09 12:09
#504
Surprised to be Heard: Presenters at Site C Inquiry Find Their Voice
quote:
Eoin Finn, a retired KPMG partner, challenged BC Hydro’s lack of demand-side management (industry speak for reducing energy consumption, a.k.a. PowerSmart). According to the Clean Energy Act which governs the utility, conservation is supposed to be used for two-thirds of all energy demand forecast. In other words, if we need 5,100 gigawatt hours of energy, 3,700 gigawatts should come from energy conservation.
“BC Hydro seems to have forgotten about that,” Finn said later in an interview. “We should only be putting in one-third of what we need into any demand profile. If we need 5,100 gigawatts, we should only build one-third of it, roughly 1,700 gigawatts.”
Regarding the argument that there’s only so much energy conservation possible, as a former BC Hydro manager said, Finn laughed. “If they look at their comparables from Maine to California, they’ll find several examples that are doing at least four per-cent demand-side management per year, compounded. When you compound four per-cent a year, it gets up there pretty quick. If BC Hydro were to do anything of the same, by the time we get to Site C, we would certainly not need it.” Right now, he says BC Hydro is reporting a one per-cent demand-side management savings. “In 2017, they spent $97 Million for a paltry one per-cent saving, or 602-Gigawatt hours.”
Physician and former Vancouver city councillor Fred Bass also critiqued BC Hydro’s focus on increasing supply over incentivizing conservation. He recommended to the panel that the utility be renamed and reorganized into the BC Energy Conservation Authority. “If terminating the project leads to a major change in the way B.C. deals with energy conservation, whether termination costs $1 billion or $3 billion, it would be a victory,” he said.
The Clean Energy Act’s focus on demand-side management is contrary to the previous government’s “build it and they will come” mantra. Last year, former energy minister Bill Bennett responded to questions about the need for Site C by saying, “Our opportunity is to drive demand. It’s to get people to use more electricity.”
Lots of speakers addressed agriculture and food security. “The agricultural potential in the Peace River valley is incomparable. It is by far the best farmland that we have,” said Julian Napoleon. “I do a lot of talks around the country about food security, and I can tell you that people in the Arctic are facing a severe food crisis. The Peace River valley is the northernmost prime agricultural area in the country. It’s an anomaly. You can grow crops there that you don’t see until you get south to the Okanagan.”
Applause was sparse, but came most often when speakers talked about First Nations rights. Rita Wong, an environmental humanities professor, spoke of the cost the Treaty 8 First Nations have borne for resource extraction in their territory, particularly from WAC Bennett dam.
“People in Vancouver need to realize where their electricity comes from. I think about the colonial violence and the historical destruction of communities that’s embedded in the flick of a light switch,” she said. “I realize that I am, on a daily basis, implicated in that history. We can't change that history. What we can change is how we respond to it by not destroying more the Peace River Valley.” Wong says her involvement in Site C opposition is a way of active reconciliation with First Nations.
Fri, 2017-11-03 10:42
#505
Hudson’s Hope Goes Solar As Town Faces Site C’s Biggest Impacts
Hudson’s Hope, the municipality that would be most affected by the Site C dam, is going solar with a blast.
“It’s starting to look like a real, honest to goodness twenty-first century solar community,” said Don Pettit of the Peace Energy Renewable Energy Cooperative, the business that recently installed 1,580 photovoltaic panels, giving Hudson’s Hope the largest municipal solar array in the province.
The panels — in more than a half-dozen locations, including on the rooftops of the public works shop, municipal building, curling rink, arena, and beside sewage treatment lagoons — will save an estimated $70,000 a year in hydro bills, according to Hudson’s Hope mayor Gwen Johansson.
“Over 30 years, that amounts to savings of more than two million dollars,” Johansson told DeSmog Canada. “If hydro rates go up the savings will be even greater.”
Johansson said Site C had nothing to do with the district’s decision to embrace solar, even though the project’s impacts on Hudson’s Hope will be extensive.
“It’s purely a financial decision,” she said. “It’s a pragmatic cost saving.”
Despite conservation efforts such as installing LED lights in the town arena and other district buildings, Johansson said Hudson Hope’s annual hydro bill climbed from $68,000 in 2000 to $172,000 in 2016.
The cost of electricity for buildings with solar panels will be reduced by an average 75 per cent, according to the mayor.....
Fri, 2017-11-03 10:43
#506
Sat, 2017-11-04 12:58
#507
Site C panel dismisses some critics claims
http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-site-c-panel-di...
Sat, 2017-11-04 15:11
#508
Why British Columbians Should Demand a Public Inquiry on the Site C Dam
https://www.desmog.ca/2017/11/03/why-british-columbians-should-demand-pu...
Sun, 2017-11-05 13:13
#509
Horgan on Site C: ‘I Told You So’ Doesn’t Mean It’s Dead
The British Columbia Utilities Commission’s report on the Site C dam project confirms the former government was wrong to start construction, but it doesn’t make the current government’s decision on whether to continue easy, Premier John Horgan said Thursday.
“I take no comfort in saying ‘I told you so,’ but I have been talking about the challenges of proceeding with a multi-billion dollar project without any third party oversight,” Horgan said, adding that the BCUC exists to protect ratepayers from governments making bad decisions.
quote:
Horgan said the BCUC report won’t necessarily lead cabinet to decide to stop the project. “This is a serious situation that is going to have a significant impact on everything that we do going forward,” he said. “We’re going to take the time and look at the report. We’re going to do some analysis of what the consequences would be for the treasury, for taxpayers, but also what the consequences would be for BC Hydro ratepayers.”
The NDP government inherited a significant challenge and will take the time to make the right decision, Horgan said. “We have to take the broader view here,” he said. “I ran on a platform to make life more affordable for British Columbians, and this first challenge in the first 100 days is a big one and I’m going to have to grapple with it. There’s no magic fix here, but we want to make sure we do the right thing.”
After the report came out, Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall said the government will consult with First Nations and make a decision before the end of the year on whether to stop the project. Suspending it is no longer an option, she said....
Sun, 2017-11-05 13:14
#510
quote:
On the steps of the legislature, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told a crowd of around 150 protesters gathered Thursday that the project should be terminated and the NDP should be given time to arrive at that decision.
“I was greatly encouraged by the BCUC report,” Phillip said. “As a consequence of a very brief review, we’ve all learned what we’ve known and suspected for quite some time, that this is a completely bogus project.”
He said he doesn’t want his 15 grandchildren to have to pay for the Site C dam for the rest of their lives. “I have every confidence that the Horgan government will do the right thing,” Phillip said. “It’s going to be a very challenging decision, but I believe that based on the BCUC report and what that has revealed that they will step up and do the right thing in regard to all British Columbians.”
Phillip said people who want the project terminated need to be optimistic. “We need to support the work of this government. We have spent so many years in the trenches throwing rocks at this building over a whole number of issues, but now we have a government that’s willing to invest in the people of British Columbia, so we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
“We need to give them the necessary support to be able to make the right decision and to re-elect this government the next time out, so we can continue moving into a more progressive future in the province of British Columbia and move away from these silly notions of the megaprojects and everything the Clark government represented.”
Sun, 2017-11-05 14:44
#511
quote:
First of all, the project is neither on time nor on budget. The report says “the total cost at completion may be in excess of $10.0 billion as there are significant risks remaining which could lead to further budget overruns.” On the risk of construction cost overruns, the report notes Site C “has already exceeded its budget, only two years into a nine-year schedule. There are tension cracks and disputes with its contractors, both of which remain unresolved.”
Interestingly, the economic case for Site C before BCUC was biased in favour of completion due to “sunk costs.” That is, going forward we should not count the $2 billion already spent and just look at how much it would cost to get to completion. By this formulation, it’s Site C power at a discount – although ratepayers would still have to pay for the full amount.
Even if we accept that argument, it now looks like at least another $8 billion would be needed to complete Site C rather than the $6 billion touted just a few months ago.
Second, the whole case for Site C was predicated on large increases in future demand for electricity. Most of this was from new liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations and expanded upstream gas production. But we know that the dismal economics of LNG – the cost of landing that gas in Asia is greater than the price it would receive – have led to most LNG proposals being shelved.
Mon, 2017-12-11 15:02
#512
Let's put Site C's timeline and budget into perspective with a less disingenuous approach. In June of this year, at the time the NDP took over government, Site C was on time and budget.
Mon, 2017-12-11 15:13
#513
Premier Horgan announces that Site C will proceed. The greenweaver mutters about 'recall' and the unions hope to replace northern bc workers with lower mainland members. Union jobs are safer and more tightly run because they cannot afford inefficiency. As long as there is no cost creep and sneaky insider hiring tactics, no big deal.
Mon, 2017-12-11 18:15
#514
Decision made. Get on with it. Future demand is currently under-estimated. 30 years from now you'll look back and say "sure glad they didn't can this project". The majority of world geographics would crawl on glass for weeks to have the hydro-electric opportunities that we have here in Canada. The only folks who want to shut down these terrific and responsible projects are Canadians. We're laughed at on so many issues.
Wed, 2017-12-27 09:58
#515
*bump*
[Trying to avoid multiple spam threads re-starting conversations that already have a history.]
Wed, 2017-12-27 11:17
#516
re: #510: Stew Philip has been an NDP party member for years. And it shows. A far cry from the early days of UBCIC who would talk only 'nation to nation' to Ottawa because for sovereign Indigenous nations 'to talk to the Province is treason.' Welcome to Canadian neo-colonialism. Vote NDP.
Thu, 2017-12-28 10:30
#517
Thu, 2018-01-04 22:59
#518
I think the BC Premier makes it quite clear why we had to go ahead with Site C: $4 billion dollars. Had the project not already have us BCers on the hook for $4 Billion, the BC NDP never would have initiated it.
But if folks don't like the project perhaps they might want to consider complaining to the BC Liberals who totally created this mess in the first place.
If the BC NDP had stopped the project our Hydro bills would have immediately begun to skyrocket, and many other promoted programs like child care, ALR, health care, seniors care and ICBC improvements, etc. would not see the light of day. And water after all is a renewable resource.
Q&A: Premier John Horgan on Site C, trade mission to Asia
H: The Treaty 8 Nations, West Moberly in particular, are absolutely entitled to follow the path that they’re on. I’m not going to say this was an easy decision, certainly not for them. But I had to look beyond the narrow and look at the broad, and the broad conclusion that I came to was that if we’re going to realize the objectives that we set as a government of genuine reconciliation, across the province not just in the Peace, we needed to make sure that we did not saddle ratepayers today with $4 billion in debt and to get nothing in return.
http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/site-c/q-a-premier-john-horgan-on-site-c...
Thu, 2018-01-04 23:51
#519
No. The operative principle trumping all else here is 'might makes right'. He has the power to proceed overtop of all others and the rights of Indigenous, who do not have the power to stop it. The same principle a BC NDP government employed at Gustasen Lake in 1995, where the rights of an American cattle rancher on 'crown' land were defended by armed force over the rights of Secwepemc traditional sovereigntists to their Sundance grounds.
Fri, 2018-01-05 00:52
#520
Yes. John Horgan made the best decision under the circumstances and indigenous peoples, with the NDP in government, are going to get much more of the work at Site C.
JH: There’s three key elements that we wanted to focus on in the announcement, and we haven’t fleshed those out in any significant way because we hadn’t made decision to go or no go until last week in cabinet. I didn’t want the public service to be working on programs that would not be realized and I wanted to make sure my colleagues and cabinet in the government caucus had every opportunity to make arguments and look at evidence before we started putting in place the mitigation that we’re going to need to diminish some of the impacts of this project.
The largest one, in my opinion, the largest challenge is reconciliation with indigenous communities. You know full well in the region there’s division on the project between indigenous and non-indigenous communities, in households. There are people that believe the project is not in the best interest of the province and there are people who believe it’s the only way to go. This plays itself out right across B.C. Even in my own household my spouse believed on balance the project would have a negative impact on a whole range of issues. So, we’re trying to work through those. Indigenous reconciliation is a key part of that and we’re going to have programs over time that will address those issues to the best of our ability.
The loss of agricultural land is paramount to people of British Columbia, so we want to make sure we were doing well more than the previous government was doing and having a dedicated stream of revenue that was coming from the project to put directly into food security, not just in the Peace, but right across the province. This is a provincial asset. It has a local impact, but it has a provincial impact as well, and that is our ability to feed ourselves into the future. So, food mitigation, agriculture mitigation is a key part of that.
And, lastly, we want to make sure we’re training more people. The current number of apprentices on site is woefully inadequate and we want to make sure that there are community benefit agreements. The public is spending, through BC Hydro, $10.7 billion. We want to make sure local companies get the maximum benefit from this, that we’re training the next generation of skilled workers, and that, most importantly, that everyone benefits from this expenditure, not just a select few.
Fri, 2018-01-05 01:06
#521
Looking at the parties’ Site C Dam decisions
n the True Spirit of the Season, we should all have sympathy for Premier John Horgan and his NDP government for having the courage and the political common sense to recognize that they had been painted into a corner on the Site C project. To lay off 2,000 workers and end up to 10,000 person-years of employment for the region (at Christmas time no less), and then raise BC Hydro rates 12 per cent (or cancel other major promises), just to write off $2 billion of wasted money was just too hard to do. Sure, there is a good chance that the Site C Dam will not look great in 20-30 years time— there is the little matter of nearly 100 kilometres of flooded river valley, including thousands of acres of prime farmland, precious native burial sites and private homes—-but it is possible that the extra energy will come in very handy, and it has been estimated that it could prevent between 30 and 70 million tons of carbon dioxide from spilling into the atmosphere.
It is far more likely, however, that history will be unkind to the BC Liberals for the way they forced this issue through. When demand for electricity was unexpectedly flat (due to growing efficiency) and the price of renewables fell about 60 per cent over the past decade, the Liberals should have delayed and re-evaluated the whole project. After all, why flood the Peace River Valley if you don’t have to? Instead, they pulled BC Hydro out of the Utilities Commission, in part to prevent just such a re-evaluation from ever taking place. The so-called Clean Energy Act (CEA) mandated Powerex, Hydro’s marketing division, to sell surplus power from the Columbia Dam to the U.S. grid. It then prohibited the expansion of the natural-gas-fired Burrard Thermal Plant, in part one suspects because the Liberals wanted Site C to look more necessary than it really was.
https://www.100milefreepress.net/opinion/looking-at-the-parties-site-c-d...
Sat, 2018-01-06 20:22
#522
Watching B.C. Hydro is a growth industry
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-watching-b-c-h...
Thu, 2018-01-25 06:18
#523
Tue, 2018-01-30 02:46
#524
It seems the BC NDP decision to reluctantly continue Site C is presently supported by BCers as the NDP has now has jumped to a 5% lead in the polls
https://globalnews.ca/news/3979073/new-poll-has-bc-ndp-widening-lead-over-bc-liberals/
Tue, 2018-01-30 15:01
#525
It seems the BC NDP decision to reluctantly continue Site C is presently supported by BCers as the NDP has now has jumped to a 5% lead in the polls
https://globalnews.ca/news/3979073/new-poll-has-bc-ndp-widening-lead-over-bc-liberals/
Its always been good settler politics to steal from First Nations to pay for the services that voters want. Fuck the BC NDP and their reluctant racism. Those devil Liberal's made them ignore their solemn committment to UNDRIP is not just a lame excuse it is the epitome of hypocracy.
“During his election campaign, Premier Horgan promised to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes the principle of ‘free, prior, and informed consent’ before any government decision that would impact Aboriginal and Treaty rights,” say Chief Willson. “14 Indigenous groups downstream of the dam have called on Premier Horgan to halt Site C, and we as the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations have warned we will bring a ‘billion-dollar’ lawsuit for infringement of our rights as embodied in Treaty No. 8.”