Right Side Up
Bruce Strachan
You've got to hand it to Premier Gordon Campbell; he'll never be accused of letting a little controversy stand in the way of a good idea. Monday morning, Campbell announced the B.C. government is moving forward with the Site C clean energy project.
Speaking to the decision, Campbell said, "Site C will be a publicly owned heritage asset and will ensure that British Columbia has reliable sources of clean electricity, while contributing to our goal of electricity self-sufficiency."
Controversy aside, and there will be lots of it, Site C is a good idea and for all of the reasons Campbell mentioned. We have the natural resources, the requisite hydro infrastructure and the land capacity to enjoy clean-energy self-sufficiency, so why not use it?
Although it's news now, Site C is a project with some considerable history. Citizen readers will note the comments in Tuesday's paper by former NDP MLA Alf Nunweiler who served from 1972 to 1975. On Site C, Nunweiler said, " I really think it's overdue."
To put Nunweiler's opinion in context, Site C has always been the third and final leg of the total Peace power project for decades. By way of history and BC Hydro's alphabet soup terminology, Site A, is the W.A.C. Bennett dam, completed in 1968.
Site B, is the Peace Canyon dam, completed and operational in 1980. The Peace Canyon dam is 23 kilometers downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett dam.
Site C was to be built at some future date 83 kilometers downstream from the Peace Canyon dam, seven kilometers south of Ft. St. John.
By way of quick political rewind, when the Peace Canyon dam was completed in 1980, the Bill Bennett government, looked at phase three - Site C - and backed off. The opinion of the day was that the province had an abundance of hydroelectric capacity for the foreseeable future. In the 1980s B.C. was net exporter of electricity.
I was a brand new government backbencher at the time and the only thing that struck me as curious was seeing Bill Bennett back away from any big project.
Fast-forward to today and the energy and economic scene has changed completely in those intervening 30 years. Thanks to the whole onslaught of global warming and the concentration of greenhouse gasses, fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas are no longer acceptable for electrical generation. Nuclear generation would never be accepted as a power provider and B.C. is now a net-importer of electricity, currently about 12 per cent a year and growing.
Looking at that evidence, it's clear Site C is an idea whose time has not only come but is long overdue. Moreover, thanks to long-range planning over 50 years ago, Site C is a remarkably efficient project. Looking at the design history, we know it is the third project on a one-river system. Here's the hydro generating sequence. At the top of the stream, Williston Reservoir feeds the W.A.C. Bennett dam which generates 13,000 gigawatt hours annually. The released water flows from the W.A.C. Bennett dam to the Peace Canyon dam. At that site, 3,500 gigawatt hours are generated on an annual basis. Site C will be the third stop for the Peace River where a proposed 4,600 gigawatt hours will be generated per year.
Site C takes advantage of the water stored at the Williston Reservoir and it's estimated Site C would generate about 30 per cent of the energy produced at the Bennett dam, but would only need five per cent of the reservoir area.
That is the Site C advantage over any other hydro-generating project. It's also the nerdy, pocket-protector science-guy argument.
Where Campbell and the Liberals will face the big guns is not in the gigawatt-hour battle but in the political trenches.
As you no doubt noted in Tuesday's Citizen, protest groups are not taking the decision lightly. Although Monday's announcement only moves the Site C project to stage three of a five-stage planning process, environmental groups, First Nations representatives and some North Peace residents are digging in for a fight.
But then so is Gordon Campbell. He knows he has to retire. Like or not, prior to the 2013 election, he's going to turn into a pumpkin. Site C will be his legacy piece. If he can pull it off, it sure beats the memories of Maui, the carbon tax and HST.
