Premier Gordon Campbell's Site C dam

Premier Gordon Campbell's Site C dam is starting to look like a done deal
By Charlie Smith
http://www.straight.com/article-317013/vancouver/premier-gordon-campbells-site-c-dam-starting-look-done-deal

siteCweb.jpg
Illustration shows what the 60-metre-high Site C dam would look like on the Peace River near Fort St. John.

Don't kid yourself. Premier Gordon Campbell may have decided to build the Site C hydroelectric dam around the same time as then-B.C. Progress Board chairman David Black recommended doing this in a newspaper article back in April 2004.

But it wasn't going to help Campbell's northeastern MLAs by announcing this before the 2005 or the 2009 elections.

With the last election out of the way, Campbell will likely declare on Monday (April 19) that his government is moving to the third of a five-stage process that will determine the future of the proposal.

This will create an impression among some that this is not a done deal.

This third stage, which is expected to last two years, involves dealing with regulatory issues and the environmental assessment of the project.

Keep in mind that in Campbell's B.C., environmental assessments never thwart major capital projects. Especially ones as big as the Site C dam, which will cost up to $6.6 billion and would flood the Peace River valley between the Peace Canyon Dam and the point where the Peace and Moberly rivers connect.

And if the B.C. Utilities Commission gets in the way--like it did with run-of-river power projects--a Campbell-led government will likely change the law to ensure that the Site C dam will still go ahead.

That will be followed by stage four (detailed design and engineering) and stage five (construction).

The 1,100-metre-long Site C dam would be located seven kilometres southwest of Fort St. John, and would generate enough electricity for about 460,000 homes. Behind it would be an 83-kilometre reservoir, which would flood approximately 5,340 hectares.

Even though this will be one of the biggest announcements of Campbell's political career, the Site C dam wasn't even mentioned in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources service plan this year.

Here are some things I'll be watching for in Monday's announcement:

* Whether Campbell will admit that the power generated by the Site C dam will be used to help companies extract bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, which would belie any claims that this is a green energy project.

* Whether Campbell will provide reporters with an estimate of how much energy generated from the Site C dam will cost per kilowatt-hour.

* Whether Campbell will link the pending environmental assessment of the Site C dam to concerns about peak oil, which is a topic he has steadfastly avoided discussing while promoting the Gateway roadbuilding program in Metro Vancouver.

Related article: Peace River power play over potential Site C dam

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

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B.C. to press ahead on Peace dam
By Tom Fletcher - BC Local News

Published: April 18, 2010 3:00 PM
Updated: April 18, 2010 3:47 PM

http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/ahobserver/news/91432174.html

Premier Gordon Campbell and Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom are headed north to the W.A.C. Bennett dam Monday, for an announcement widely expected to be moving ahead with the Site C hydroelectric dam.

The announcement, set for 11:30 a.m. at the dam near Fort St. John, features a satellite feed for live television coverage.

The B.C. government signaled its intentions for the proposed third dam on the Peace River in February's throne speech, which promised major transmission line upgrades to Alberta, Saskatchewan and the United States. Extension of the grid will connect the booming natural gas industry in northeastern B.C., and allow clean energy exports, the government said in its agenda-setting speech for the year.

Lekstrom has had a report from BC Hydro since December on the project, which has been studied on and off for decades. He is expected to send the project to environmental assessment, the third stage of a five-stage process that will extend for several more years.

BC Hydro's latest estimate of the project cost is between $5 billion and $6.6 billion, but much of the engineering work was done 25 years ago. New site work and community consultations were done for phase two.

Site C would flood a reservoir more than 9,000 hectares in size, narrowly confined to the river valley downstream of the W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams. Its 60-metre-high dam and six generating units would recover more energy from water already held upstream, and generate one third as much power as the W.A.C. Bennett dam with a reservoir one 20th the size of Williston Lake.

The B.C. government has also promised new clean energy legislation this year that will simplify the regulatory process for independent power projects. Earlier, it required BC Hydro to obtain new energy from contracted private facilities, but confirmed that if Site C is built it would be owned and operated by the Crown corporation.