On the outskirts of Dawson Creek business is brisk at a railway siding where a new venture has sprung up alongside three grain buyers.

It is late September, days after an early snowfall. With the snow now melted, farmers race to get their crops in.

Back on grain-buying row, five long “b-train” trucks line up. As one of the double-trailer trucks pulls away onto the Alaska Highway, another pulls in.

But the trucks aren’t delivering grain — they are being loaded with the newest hot commodity: sand.

For many local farmers, the trucks are a grim reminder of their diminished status. Grain country is now gas land. Wheat, barley, oats and canola crops may still be grown in abundance — but fossil fuel companies call the shots.

A fourth grain-buyer once worked where the frack sand seller now hangs his shingle. The new business on the block is LaPrairie, a company with a bucolic name that peddles in the inedible.

The sand sold by LaPrairie — 63,500 kilograms per truck — is destined for new natural gas wells sprouting up all over northern B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve, which exists at least theoretically to preserve land for growing food.

Forcing natural gas from the ground deep below local farmlands requires some of the most intense hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations on earth.

During fracking, tons of sand and millions of litres of water are pressure-pumped underground with such brute force that local farmhouses shake. The water fractures the shale rock deep below the grain fields, while the sand props the fractures open to let the trapped gas out.

It takes roughly four million kilograms, or 64 b-train trucks of sand, to complete just one frack job. With each passing truck, some local farmers feel they are being told if not literally, then figuratively, to eat dirt. For some, it may herald an end to a way of life that has seen three or more generations tilling the earth.

To get a sense of the growing tensions in this fractured land, The Narwhal visited the Farmington area, a rural enclave north and west of Dawson Creek in July and again in September.

A new natural gas well pad with numerous wells is readied for fracking north of Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Welcome to the land of industrial sprawl

With a rueful chuckle, Brian Derfler welcomes the visitor to “the land of northern lights.” Except he’s not talking about shape-shifting sheets of white and green light that occasionally turn Canadian skies into mystical dreamscapes, but ignited natural gas, roaring out of flare stacks and the harsh glare of halogen bulbs at gas plants and compressor stations.

“We’ve got so much light pollution, it’s mind-boggling,” says Derfler, a third-generation farmer. “The development has just started. We just don’t know where it’s going to end. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

In the past few years, farm families around Farmington have witnessed an unparalleled ramp-up in industrial activities. Encana recently spearheaded the construction of three large gas processing plants. One of them, called Sunrise, is the largest such plant built in Western Canada in 30 years and is a half-hour drive from Derfler’s home.

The second, Saturn, is just minutes away from the Derfler farm, while the Tower plant, situated on a bench of farmlands between the Kiskatinaw and Peace rivers, is a 20-minute drive away.

All three plants gobbled up farmland and highlight Encana’s plans to cash in on the region’s “liquids rich” natural gas deposits. It is gas land’s good fortune and grain country’s bad luck that the region’s hydrocarbon deposits contain lots of condensate, a liquid prized by Alberta’s oilsands producers, who use it to dilute low-value, unrefined bitumen so it can be piped to refineries.

The condensate is what Encana is after. To get it means more wells, more fracking, more pipelines, more processing plants. In short, much more industrial sprawl.

“My prediction is we’ll see one gas well pad here every half mile in any direction if they have their way and two wells every quarter. And there goes the farmland,” Derfler says.

Famers rarely talk metric. A “quarter” or “quarter section” denotes 160 acres of land. Typically, the region’s grain farmers own one or more “sections,” or four quarters (for the metric-thinkers among us, a “section” is equal to about 2.5 square kilometres). Many lease and farm more land beyond that.

On Farmington’s fields, most new well pads cover 20 acres, meaning that if Derfler is proven right just the well pads alone could take 25 per cent of farmland out of production.

Encana’s Sunrise gas plant is the largest such plant built in Western Canada in three decades. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

The Sunrise gas plant, one of three built in recent years, in the Agricultural Land Reserve near Farmington. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Encana’s Sunrise gas plant. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

In preparation for drilling those pads, Encana and others operating in the B.C.’s South Peace region, bulldoze away all of the topsoil and underlying soil layers before the heavy drilling rigs and later fracking equipment arrives.

As the industry pumps more prized condensate from below ground, pad sizes are getting bigger as companies drill more wells on each pad.

North of Derfler’s farm a short distance east of the Tower gas plant, grain farmer Barry Critcher has a 39-acre well pad slated for his land with a proposed 56 wells.

The pad will occupy one corner of one quarter section, an outcome Critcher says was the best he could hope for under the circumstances and that was achieved only because Encana was willing to negotiate — not something that is always the case.

But, he noted, there’s no getting around that it’s “still a big piece of land. And you have to understand that realistically they can take 40 acres of every quarter if they want to.”

“How fast this is getting developed is incredible,” Critcher says. “I’m not a radical. I’m not against oil and gas. I would like to see it developed in a sustainable way that doesn’t have the impact on agriculture. We have to be here for the long-term together.”

“I’m not a radical. I’m not against oil and gas. I would like to see it developed in a sustainable way that doesn’t have the impact on agriculture.” — Barry Critcher, grain farmer

Permanent industrial sites quietly erode farmland

The region’s rapidly eroding farmlands are part of a continent-wide phenomenon. In a recent paper in the journal, Science, researchers from the University of Montana looked at oil and gas industry incursions on farmlands from the south coast of Texas to northern Alberta.

What they discovered was an industry that is seriously disrupting global food trading. Between 2000 and 2012 alone, fossil fuel company incursions on farmland caused the loss of 120 million bushels of wheat production, 13 per cent of all the wheat exported by the U.S. in 2013.

Closer to home, an advisory committee appointed by B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham to recommend ways to “revitalize” the Agricultural Land Reserve recently flagged further losses to come.

The committee had particular concerns about the north, which is often unfairly portrayed as of marginal agricultural value. Not only does the north have expansive tracts of farmland, but its value as a food source may grow as global climate patterns change — provided that the land and water is there to support crop production.

“The impacts of oil and gas extraction on agricultural land and farm businesses in northeast B.C. have reached a breaking point,” the committee, headed by former Independent provincial MLA, Vicki Huntington, told Popham.

“Accelerating” oil and gas development is rapidly making parts of the Agricultural Land Reserve “unusable” to farm, the committee continued, warning: “With continued changes in extraction and processing methods along with the pace and scale of development, these activities that were once considered temporary are no longer. Instead they are permanent industrial sites built on farmland and next to farm communities.”

Flared gas at an industry facility north of Farmington, B.C. Local farmer Brian Derfler now calls this area the “land of northern lights.” Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

The panel raised particular concerns about the Balkanization of the land reserve. In 2014, the then Liberal government split the 40-year-old reserve in two. The dramatic change coincided with the government’s promotion of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, processing in the province.

Pat Pimm, a former consultant to the oil and gas industry who later became MLA for Peace North and subsequently agriculture minister, pushed hard for the changes as did Bill Bennett, MLA for Kootenay East, who went on to become energy minister and an advocate for the Site C dam.

In the southern Zone 1, protecting farmland remained a top priority. But in northern Zone 2, which encompassed both grain country and gas land, the rules were relaxed making it easier to use farmlands for “other” purposes.

In early November, the provincial government responded by introducing new legislation with Bill 52.

“We are protecting farmland in B.C. to ensure land is available now and for future generations of farmers, so people have a safe, secure supply of locally grown food on their tables for years to come,” Popham said in a prepared statement.

An accompanying press release noted the new bill would “restore the integrity” of the Agricultural Land Reserve by reinstating one zone for all farmlands, cracking down on companies dumping toxic wastes on farmland and preventing “wealthy speculators” from building “mega-mansions” on croplands — a hot button issue in the voter rich Lower Mainland.

Neither the press materials nor the bill mentioned the oil and gas industry, however. Nor was B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, referred to once. Thanks to a “delegation” agreement between the Oil and Gas Commission and the Agricultural Land Commission, the Oil and Gas Commission has broad powers to allow for a range of “non-farm” uses in the land reserve.

From grain farm to industrial water hub in three simple steps

By far the most potent symbol of the threats to northern farmlands is the far-behind-schedule and massively over-budget Site C dam. In only its preliminary stages of development, the $10.7-billion-and-counting hydro project would flood thousands of acres of rich Peace River valley soils, among the best farmlands anywhere in B.C.

But in dispersed and much smaller pockets all over the Agricultural Land Reserve, productive farmlands lie buried under a spider’s web of earthen dams and reservoirs that fossil fuel companies built to trap freshwater used in their fracking operations.

Journalist Ben Parfitt looks over one of two massive dams and reservoirs in the Farmington area built by Encana. As the gas industry’s thirst for water grows, so does its impact on farmland. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Jim Strasky is another third-generation farmer. He has two such dams near his home along with two large “burrow pits” — essentially giant holes in the ground — which also hold water.

A few years ago, his neighbour’s land was farmed. Then someone came along with an offer too good to pass up.

“Outside investors, then consultants working for Encana, purchase property for nothing other than oil and gas. And I’m pretty sure Encana fronts them the money. Encana doesn’t buy direct because it looks bad,” Strasky says. “A third party buying it is more palatable.”

Third-generation farmer Jim Strasky with gas operations in the background in the Farmington area of northeastern B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

After Strasky’s neighbour sold, the new owner quickly excavated a huge pit at one end of the parcel. Overnight, a grain farm became an industrial water hub. Encana then applied for and received a new water licence from the Oil and Gas Commission. Bulldozers arrived. The topsoil was stripped away, and the excavated and mounded earth became a new dam.

After dam construction, a long, fat industrial hose snaked down the roadside ditch siding the dam. Derfler followed the hose one day in a four-by-four. It ran for almost five kilometres, before dropping down a steep rutted road to the banks of the Kiskatinaw River, a river that has run perilously low in recent years due to drought.

Four diesel-fired pumps, capable of moving tens of thousands of cubic metres of water through the hose were positioned along the route.

In 2017, according to the “Frac Focus” database maintained by the Oil and Gas Commission, Encana drilled 99 wells, and used just under two million cubic metres of water fracking those wells. By August of this year, Encana had drilled 166 wells, a pace that if maintained would see 300 wells fracked and four million cubic metres of water consumed by the end of the year.

Not all of that water will be freshwater, but much of it will be. And much of it will come from dam reservoirs that only a short while ago were grain fields.

Meanwhile, a big elephant in the room remains largely ignored.

“Nobody wants to deal with the cumulative effects,” says Strasky’s brother, Rod, who farms just nearby.

Farmer Jim Strasky with his brother Rod in the background. The brothers trace their roots in grain country to their grandparents who emigrated to Canada from Slovakia in the 1920s as homesteaders. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Earthquakes, frack dams and flaring

In May, in response to numerous complaints about industry incursions on farmlands, senior Oil and Gas Commission officials, including Dave Nikolejsin, deputy minister of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and chair of the commission, travelled north to deliver a presentation to the Peace River Regional District. The Oil and Gas Commission noted that 50 residences in and around Farmington were now within just half a kilometre of an active gas well or other industrial facility with many more wells to follow.

The region already had 559 active gas wells, another 88 were in development, and a further 291 more were authorized on roughly 150 more well pads. The Oil and Gas Commission also said that on five different occasions over the span of just one 12-month period ending last April, earthquakes were triggered by fracking operations resulting in “felt events” inside Farmington farmhouses. Jim Strasky says he spotted a crack in the foundation of his house shortly after one such event.

As a result, the Oil and Gas Commission told the regional district that it had issued a “special” order to Encana and other companies.

“The intent of this Order is to ensure companies are notifying residents when undertaking completion operations [a euphemism for fracking] at a well where there could be induced seismic — and felt events,” the Oil and Gas Commission told the Peace River Regional District, adding that it is important to open “lines of communication” with local residents who are the “most likely to be affected.”

Abandoned wells add insult to injury for struggling farmers

Rod and Jim Strasky trace their roots in grain country to their grandparents who emigrated to Canada from Slovakia in the 1920s and did the brutal work of clearing the land to make way for the farms and homesteads that followed. Their uncle, George Jr., successfully notched 65 consecutive crop years.

The work is relentless, the profit margins tight. Jim matter-of-factly said on a drive into Dawson Creek to deliver a truckload of red spring wheat that the price he’ll fetch will be close to what it was in the 1970s.

Rod and Jim continue to farm. But oil and gas company incursions onto their lands and those of their neighbours make it harder every day. Ever since the province sold Crown-owned BC Rail to CN, the brothers say it’s harder to move grain. To illustrate the point, Derfler tells a story about swinging by the rail siding outside the grain-buying row in Dawson Creek one April afternoon. There on the tracks were dozens of oilcars, another dozen or so carrying frack sand and one lone grain car being decoupled from its oil industry mates. It’s no wonder LaPrairie set up shop where it did.

But the ongoing losses and insults to the Straskys lands are the bigger worry. Both brothers deal with old gas wells that Terra Energy put in. When Terra went bankrupt a few years back, a contractor owed money slapped a lien on the quarter sections where those wells were located.

“If there’s an abandoned well site, and there’s liens on it, the banks won’t loan you any money,” Rod says.

Terra’s bankruptcy was a wakeup call for the Straskys. But also, the brothers say, for all of us.

That wakeup call is not just about the threats oil and gas industry expansions pose to farms and food security, but to the potentially huge, unfunded liabilities that provincial taxpayers in Alberta, British Columbia and elsewhere may face for decades after the condensate and gas is gone.

The story of Alberta’s $100-billion well liability problem. How did we get here?

As Rod talked about the legacy of the Terra wells, excavator crews dug a wide swath through one of his fields while a legion of workers laid sections of a new gas pipeline. Not far away, another crew in another one of Rod’s quarters worked to fix the damage done by the installation of yet another pipeline. It was the second try at restoring the land.

“I refuse to farm that land until it is back to what it was before development. I waste my time and money trying to grow a crop on there,” Strasky says. “We’ve got pipelines in the ground here for ten years and it [the farmland] is not producing the way it was.”

A new pipeline is laid across farmer Rod Strasky’s land in Farmington. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Recent headlines were generated when a top Alberta official said the clean-up costs of oil sands mining operations and the “graveyard” of abandoned oil and gas industry operations may carry a price tag of $260 billion.

The magnitude of cleanup costs will likely be less in B.C., but Strasky is convinced there will be a big bill to pay and that a likely scenario is that the major players drilling and fracking for natural gas and condensate in northern B.C. will eventually leave, roll their aging assets into numbered companies and the province will be left on the hook for final cleanup costs.

On the ten quarter-sections of land he owns, seven have pipeline crossings with 13 different pipelines in the ground. He also has three small well pads on his land, including the two formerly owned by Terra.

But Terra’s well pads were tiny — clearings of one acre or less — nothing compared to today’s monstrous, multi-well pads.

“If bankruptcy occurs with a 20-acre pad, I can’t imagine the nightmare,” he says.

“Who’s going to want to buy a farm after all of this?”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In his first interview on the Site C dam, the chair of the federal-provincial panel appointed to review Canada’s largest current infrastructure project said the B.C. government was unwise to green-light the project without a review by the B.C. Utilities Commission and would have been better off to delay the decision by a few years.

“There’s a whole bunch of unanswered questions, some of which would be markedly advanced by waiting three or four years,” Harry Swain told DeSmog Canada. “And you’d still be within the period of time, even by Hydro’s bullish forecasts, when you’re going to need the juice.”

Swain, a former deputy minister of Industry Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, spoke to DeSmog Canada on his own behalf, not on behalf of the panel. In a wide-reaching interview, Swain also described the province’s failure to investigate alternatives to the dam as a “dereliction of duty.”

The B.C. government gave the go-ahead for BC Hydro’s Site C dam in December and construction is scheduled to begin this summer. If built, it will be the largest public infrastructure expenditure in the province’s history. The dam is facing six legal challenges, including one that alleges that Cabinet erred in dismissing key portions of the joint review panel’s findings on the project.

The dam — which was first turned down by the B.C. Utilities Commission in the early 1980s — would be the third on the Peace River and would flood 83 kilometres of the Peace Valley, impacting 13,000 hectares of agricultural land. The project is opposed by B.C.’s Treaty 8 First Nations, several of which have filed lawsuits.

Swain’s panel made 50 recommendations to the provincial and federal governments, but stopped short of recommending for or against the project.

“The decision on whether the project proceeds lies with elected officials, not with the panel,” the 471-page report read.

“I’m still strongly of the view that review panels are advisors and governments get paid to make the decisions and live with the consequences at the next election,” Swain told DeSmog Canada.

But that didn’t stop him from outlining how he believes the government has acted prematurely.

“You shouldn’t take decisions before you need to,” Swain said. “That means you’ll have much more information when you finally have to take a decision. Building electricity facilities in advance of need only costs money.”

‘Wisdom Would Have Been Waiting’

The panel’s report predicted that in the first four years of production, the Site C dam would lose at least $800 million because BC Hydro would generate more power than the province needs at a cost of $100 per megawatt hour — when the market price for that power is currently $30 per megawatt hour.

“Wisdom would have been waiting for two, three, four years to see whether the projections they were making had any basis in fact,” Swain said. “And they would have been able to make a better-informed decision and not necessarily a more expensive one.”

In its report, the panel wrote that it couldn’t conclude that the power from Site C was needed on the schedule presented, adding: “Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs.”

Some of the questions that still need to be answered, according to Swain, include the real cost and availability of alternatives, how B.C. should use its Columbia River rights, how British Columbians will react to increased electricity prices (which could decrease demand) and how the province’s liquefied natural gas industry will develop.

Panel Instructed Not to Pass Opinion on First Nations Rights

Asked why the panel didn’t render a “yes” or “no” answer on the Site C dam, Swain responded: “We weren’t asked to.”

Further to that, Swain — who wrote a book on the Oka crisis — outlined the limitations of the review process as it related to First Nations rights.

“They said that we were to catalogue the assertions of First Nations regarding treaty rights and aboriginal rights. But we were not to pass an opinion on them. We were not to say whether consultation had been adequate and so on and forth. If you are forbidden to talk about that, you can not come to a conclusion about the overall project,” Swain said.

“The question is: well, if we had recommended anything, what would we have said? And I think the conclusion is probably pretty apparent from the text. We would have said something to the effect that it might be wise to wait for a couple years and see if some of the projections on which the project rests eventuated. However, they didn’t ask — nor did they wait.”

Decision to Skip Review by B.C. Utilities Commission ‘Not Good Public Policy’

In its report to the government, the panel said it did not have the information, time or resources to look at the accuracy of cost estimates and recommended that, if the project proceeds, costs should be examined in detail by the province’s independent regulator, the B.C. Utilities Commission.

“Knowing that the province had decided to exempt the project from the scrutiny of the utilities commission, we nonetheless felt that that was not good public policy and recommended otherwise,” Swain said. “They of course gave us the back of their hand.”

What did he think of the province ignoring that recommendation?

“I expected it entirely and I don’t think it was wise,” he added.

There were big financial questions — related to the borrowing of nearly $9 billion, the cost estimates for the project and the effect of rates on consumer demand — that the panel could not examine, Swain explained.

“That requires much, much more time and expertise,” he said. “Moreover it is a job that the utilities commission is specifically set up to be able to do.”

Government Documents Downplay Role of B.C. Utilities Commission

In documents obtained by DeSmog Canada via a freedom of information request, government spokespeople were prepped to respond to questions about why the project wasn’t referred to the utilities commission. The speaking notes were prepared for the Dec. 16 press conference announcing the B.C. government’s decision to move ahead with Site C.

“The BCUC does not actually have the capacity to do the kind of work that has been done by BC Hydro in analysing and reviewing the project, particularly the costs,” the speaking notes read.

“Well, whose fault is that?” Swain responded. “How about the owners of the utilities commission? It is their legislation that set it up to do specifically that job and if it hasn’t got the resources to do it, I think you’ve got to look back to the government.”

Swain noted that the government is essentially arguing that the proponent of the project, BC Hydro, should be relied on to review its own project.

“Is the answer therefore that such projects are only to be examined by the proponent?” Swain said. “Recall about the first thing that happened after they approved it was that they confessed, ‘Oh golly, the price is about a billion dollars higher than we thought.’ ”

Harry Swain in his Victoria home during an interview with DeSmog Canada. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

The speaking notes obtained by DeSmog Canada also said: “The costs of Site C have been independently reviewed by KPMG and an independent panel of contractors — work that the commission would have contracted out itself regardless.”

When asked why, despite being well aware of the KPMG review, the panel still recommended a review by the utilities commission, Swain responded: “If you ask Lockheed Martin what the cost of the F-35 is going to be, they — the proponents — will give you a number. And if you believe that number, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d like to sell you.”

He noted that accounting firm KPMG was hired by the project proponent, BC Hydro.

“Consultants hired by the project proponent are being hired in part to demonstrate the reasonability of the work being done by the proponent,” he said. “The last thing that you’d expect would be for the consultants to BC Hydro to say ‘Oh golly, what an interesting error you’ve made.’ It just isn’t going to happen.”

And that’s at the crux of why the panel recommended the project be reviewed by the independent B.C. Utilities Commission — because its mission is “to ensure that ratepayers receive safe, reliable, and non-discriminatory energy services at fair rates from the utilities it regulates.”

“I think projects of that nature where the public purse — and the public interest much more broadly — is involved deserve a degree of scrutiny,” Swain said.

“I think the province was determined to go ahead with the project from the beginning.”

Read Part 2 of DeSmog Canada’s Interview with Harry Swain: ‘Dereliction of duty’: B.C.’s failure to investigate alternatives to the Site C dam

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The provincial and federal governments have issued an environmental approval certificate for the Site C dam despite acknowledging it will cause significant adverse environmental effects.

“Those effects are justified in the circumstances,” says the decision statement signed by Leona Aglukkaq, Canada’s minister of environment.

The province must still decide whether to proceed with the 1,100-megawatt project based on an investment decision, expected by the end of this year.

“The final decision still has to go through the cabinet, so we’ll still be working to convince them it’s not the best decision,” said Andrea Morison of the Peace Valley Environment Association, a group that has fought the dam for decades.

The $8 billion project would be the third dam on the Peace River and would be located seven kilometres from Fort St. John, B.C.

The dam has been opposed by local farmers, ranchers and the Treaty 8 First Nations because it will flood 87 kilometres of the Peace River, impacting wildlife and flooding 30,000 acres of farmland, including an area the size of the city of Victoria within the Agricultural Land Reserve.

West Moberly Chief Roland Willson has already vowed to challenge the decision in court and has said the province can’t have both the Site C dam and liquefied natural gas (LNG) development, which requires gas from Treaty 8 territory.

The environmental assessment certificate is subject to 77 conditions, including establishing a fund of $20 million to compensate for lost agricultural lands and activities.

In May, a federal-provincial Joint Review Panel issued its report on Site C. The panel was ambivalent in its findings, saying both that the dam could provide cheap power but also that the costs needed to be examined further and that it’s not clear that the power will be needed on the timeline provided.

“The Joint Review Panel considering the dam’s impacts determined that they are so significant that only an ‘unambiguous need’ for the power would justify them. And BC Hydro did not demonstrate such a need,” said Karsten Heuer, president of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). “We don’t understand the basis on which the B.C. and federal governments could issue their approvals.”

Y2Y has argued that the Site C reservoir would seriously impede wildlife movement in the region.

“The Peace River Valley is located at the narrowest width of the Yellowstone to Yukon region and the existing Williston Reservoir already is a major blockage to wildlife movement,” Heuer said.

The joint review panel’s report included a recommendation to refer the project for review by the independent B.C. Utilities Commission, saying the panel didn’t have the time or resources to comment on the cost of the project.

“All British Columbia Hydro ratepayers should be concerned about that,” said Gwen Johansson, mayor of the District of Hudson’s Hope.

The panel also found that the province has failed to look at alternatives to the Site C dam for the past three decades. New maps released this month indicate B.C. has enough low-impact geothermal energy to power the entire province. 

Read DeSmog Canada's 12-part series on the Site C dam.

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At a time when B.C.’s politicians are considering flooding the Peace Valley for the Site C hydroelectric dam, a new project by the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association says the province could be sitting on a figurative gold mine of power with low environmental impact.The project used publicly available data to produce a database of maps and supporting information that show all the areas in B.C. that have the potential to produce geothermal energy. The project reports that, using existing technology, the province could produce between 5,500 and 6,600 mega watts of power — enough to power the whole province. Ironically, the information CanGEA used comes mainly from the oil and gas industry, which is required by law to report on things like well depth and temperature.

“The low level of effort is surprising, especially if it results in a plan that involves large and possibly avoidable environmental and social costs,” the panel wrote.

The Site C joint review panel recommended that, regardless of the decision taken on Site C, that BC Hydro establish a research and development budget for the engineering characterization of geographically diverse renewable resources, such as geothermal.

“If the senior governments were doing their job, there would be no need for this recommendation,” the panel added.

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More than four out of five respondents to a public opinion poll released Wednesday believe that B.C. farmland — like forests and water — is a vital public asset.

In addition, 82 per cent of those responding also indicated that “selling out the [Agricultural Land Reserve] ALR is a failure of leadership and a betrayal of the public trust.”

As many as 76 per cent of those taking part in the poll said the ALR protects farms, valleys and greenspace for wildlife habitat and recreational enjoyment.

Laws protecting the ALR should be strengthened or maintained, according to 71 per cent of respondents.

The poll — BC Public Attitudes Toward Agriculture and Food 2014 — also showed 58 per cent of respondents believed “there are no acceptable reasons for removing any more farmland from the Agricultural Land Reserve anywhere in B.C.”

The province-wide online poll was sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia and the Vancouver Foundation. Carried out by McAllister Opinion Research, the survey canvassed 1,704 B.C. residents aged 18 and over between July 17-29. The sample is considered accurate to within ±2.36 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The two foundations said they commissioned the study to inform discussion and decisions on the future of the ALR, a provincial land-use zone that protects farmland and land with potential to be farmed. The ALR currently makes up 5 per cent of B.C’s land base.

Pollster and president of McAllister Opinion Research, Angus McAllister, told DeSmog Canada that British Columbians have always been supportive of the ALR.

"Support for maintaining or even expanding the Agricultural Land Reserve is very high, especially among older voters,” McAllister said. “However, this support is really nothing new.”

“B.C. voters have always expressed strong support for the ALR, regardless of political stripe.”

He added, “what is striking this time however, is the strong linkage between public discomfort with changes in the ALR and rising concerns about food security.”

McAllister said concern over contaminated food imports plays a role in local support for B.C. farmland and food production. “Concerns about…food products imported from countries like Mexico and China are higher than I've seen in 15 years,” he said. “Concerns around the food supply are hard-wired to some very basic survival instincts, and that is never something to ignore."

The survey was conducted after Bill 24 — The Agricultural Land Commission Amendment Act — was passed in the B.C. Legislature in May. Essentially, Bill 24 split the 40-year-old ALR into two zones.

Zone 1 consists of the Fraser and Okanagan Valleys and southern Vancouver Island, an area representing about 10 per cent of the original ALR. According to the Liberal government, decisions in Zone 1 will continue to be made on the basis of the original principle of preserving agricultural land.

Zone 2 covers the rest of B.C., the government says, where growing seasons are shorter and there are lower value crops. In Zone 2 “decisions will now, in addition to the original principle, include additional considerations to provide farmers with more flexibility to support their farming operations.”

Critics have pointed out that Bill 24 threatens critical farmland by opening up previously protected areas to non-agricultural uses, including oil and gas development.

In August farmers from the Kootenay region demonstrated outside the B.C. legislature, saying they hadn’t been consulted on the changes.

Wendy Holm, a professional agrologist with 40 years experience in public policy and agricultural politics told DeSmog Canada Bill 24 “opens the door for Site C,” a controversial megadam project that will impact 13,000 hectares of farmland in the ALR if approved.

With the changes made under Bill 24, “the land reserve will be considered toothless,” Holm said.

“There’s tremendous potential in the north,” she added. “There’s enough land to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people.”

Among those organizations criticizing the passage of Bill 24 was the BC Food Systems Network.

“We are, of course, deeply disappointed in the passage of Bill 24 and this closure to the huge outcry from the B.C. public to protect farmland in our province,” Abra Brynne, BC Food Systems co-chair, said in a statement.

Farmland advocates fear changes from Bill 24 will increase the price of farmland for young farmers and will also increase the removal of viable farmland for commercial, industrial and real estate development, the statement said.

“This would result in reduced capacity for provincial food security in the face of climate change, as well as increased reliance of imported food, concerns over safe and sustainable agricultural practices in other jurisdictions, and increased food prices due to rising transportation costs.”

The poll released Wednesday also showed that respondents identified, when asked about the priority uses for land in British Columbia, “natural freshwater systems” (83 per cent), closely followed by “farming and growing food” (81 per cent).

It also showed that 80 per cent of respondents were concerned about dependence on other countries for our food security. In addition, 73 per cent said the ALR is a cornerstone of food security and the B.C. economy.

In a media release accompanying the poll findings, Jack Wong, CEO of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, said local, sustainable food systems are a priority issue for the foundation because of the link between food security and community well-being.

“With challenges such as development pressure on agricultural land and changing weather patterns, it is of vital importance to have forward-thinking policies that protect land for growing food, now and for future generations.” Wong was quoted as saying.

Kevin McCort, CEO of Vancouver Foundation, said the survey demonstrates that British Columbians believe strongly in safeguarding our farms and green spaces to ensure long-term health, well-being and resilience in our communities.

“The Agricultural Land Reserve is a vital public asset contributing to our ability to reliably produce fresh food, preserve local farmland and freshwater supplies, and to support local B.C. farmers and ranchers,” McCort said.

Image Credit: B.C. farmland by Kris Krug via Flickr

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In 1920, Renee Ardill’s grandparents arrived in the Peace Valley with nothing more than a milk cow, saddle horse and team and wagon. They chose a piece of land on the banks of the Peace River, built a cabin, hunted moose and grew what they could.

“They built everything from the ground up,” Ardill told DeSmog Canada. “Imagine being able to pick your piece of land and make what you wanted out of it.”

The Ardill family has been here ever since, running a cattle ranch on the banks of the Peace. But their days could be numbered if BC Hydro’s Site C hydroelectric dam gets the go-ahead this fall from the provincial and federal governments.

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The panel tasked with reviewing the project found BC Hydro failed to prove that the energy from Site C would be needed within the timeframe set out in the proposal. The panel’s report, released in May, also found that there are cost-effective alternatives to building a new dam, but the province has failed to adequately investigate options such as geothermal.

If built, the dam will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries — impacting 13,000 hectares of agricultural land, including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve, an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria.

That flooding would put the Ardill’s ranch underwater. Thirty-three other farm operations would also be affected by the project, according to the panel’s report.

“This is the best piece of land in the world. My grandpa picked a good spot. And I’m damned if I’m gonna give it up,” Ardill says. “Everybody now lives in the artificial world. People go to the grocery store and get their vegetables and they come wrapped in plastic. That’s not how it is. It comes from somewhere.”

Loss of Farmland in Peace Valley ‘Almost Tragic’: Agriculture Expert

Agriculture experts say the Peace Valley is home to some of the best land in the province, with the ability to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people, according to agriculture expert Wendy Holm.

“It’s not about what’s economic today,” Holm told DeSmog Canada. “This is land that forms part of the commons. This is part of the natural capital of our country.”

Yet, the joint review panel’s report (PDF) found that loss of agricultural land would not be significant in the context of B.C. or western Canadian agricultural production, while acknowledging “this loss would be highly significant to the farmers who would bear the loss, and that financial compensation would not make up for the loss of a highly valued place and way of life.”

Eveline Wolterson, a soil scientist who gave expert testimony during the review process, says the panel missed the point in its analysis by looking at the current use of land (largely forage production) instead of the potential of the land.

“The reality is that the reason that land is in forage production is because most of it is owned by BC Hydro or it’s in the flood reserve, which means that at any time BC Hydro could expropriate those lands,” Wolterson told DeSmog Canada. “That has discounted the value of that land, as well as discounted the amount of money landowners are willing to invest in a piece of property.”

Wolterson points to the Okanagan Valley’s now booming wine industry as an example of how the panel has failed to think of the future.

“In mid 1970s, the likelihood of agricultural use of those [Okanagan] lands would likely have been low. But because we saved those lands and left them, the use of those lands is extremely high right now,” she says.

The productivity of the agricultural land in the Peace River Valley is unique not only in the region, but in British Columbia and Western Canada, Wolterson said.

Take potatoes, a main production commodity in the Lower Mainland, for example. In the Lower Mainland, yields are about 10 tonnes per hectare. In the Peace Valley, yields are 30 per cent more at 13 tonnes per hectare due to more daylight and ideal conditions in the east-west valley, Wolterson says.

“The area that they are proposing to flood is approximately equivalent to the agricultural land base in Delta, so it’d be like flooding all that land, taking it right out of production,” she says. “It’s almost tragic.”

The David Suzuki Foundation recently released a report looking at the economic benefits of keeping the Peace River region’s remaining farmland and nature intact beyond the market value of agriculture in the region.

The Peace Dividend found that the ecosystem services (such as providing clean air, clean water, carbon storage and habitat for wildlife) provided by farmland and nature in the Peace River Watershed are conservatively worth an estimated $7.9 billion to $8.6 billion a year.

Cantaloupes, Corn Grow in Peace Valley’s Unique Microclimate

Ken and Arlene Boon, owners of Bear Flats Farm and log home builders, know the value of the valley all too well. They regularly see mule deer, moose, elk, wolves and black and grizzly bears on their land.

The Boons host the annual Paddle for the Peace on their farm, where they can grow everything from corn to cantaloupes due to the unique microclimate in the valley. If the dam is built, they will lose their best farmland and their home.

In their submission to the panel, the Boons wrote: “As we write this submission, we feel like a prisoner trying to save his life by writing a statement that will hopefully save him from the death penalty.”

Ken Boon is fighting to save his farm from being flooded by the Site C dam. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

Standing in their garden eating fresh peas, they talk about the five generations of their family who’ve lived on this land.

The 1,100-megawatt Site C dam has been on the books for 30 years and was turned down by the B.C. Utilities Commission in the 1980s. This time around, the B.C. government has exempted the project from a utilities’ commission review, despite calls from local politicians and the joint review panel itself to have the project reviewed by the independent regulator.

“Life has to go on for us, because grandpa was told in the ’70s that he was going to have to move because they were going to build it,” Arlene says. “He passed away without seeing the project happen. I’m sure that our grandkids will be having the same discussion.”

Five generations of Arlene Boon’s family have enjoyed Bear Flats Farm. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

But she hopes her grandchildren won’t have to fight this fight again.

“Our push this time is to try kill it once and for all,” Arlene says.

Solar panels on the Boons property feed energy back to the electricity grid.

“You can generate electricity many ways, but you can only grow food one way,” Ken says. “What we can’t afford to do is to be flooding farmland any more.”

Ken Boon showcases his solar panels, which feed electricity back to the B.C. grid. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

The original Bear Flats Schoolhouse is on the Boons’ land, along with the Bear Flats Museum, which houses 5,000-year-old arrowheads and family heirlooms.

“It’s impossible to replace when you have this kind of history,” Arlene says. “I don’t want to be a millionaire. I just want to be happy on this land.”

For Esther and Poul Pedersen, it’s a similar story. Their 65 hectare (160-acre) property is right above where the Site C dam would be built and is within the zone that could slough into the reservoir.

Located just five minutes outside of Fort St. John, it’s the perfect place to raise horses and give riding lessons.

“It’s really hard to replace,” Esther says. “We feel that the valley is precious.”

To mitigate the lost value of agricultural economic activity, BC Hydro proposed a $20 million agricultural compensation program to support projects in the region, in addition to farm mitigation plans for directly affected agricultural operations.

But as Esther looks out over the Peace River Valley, she — like so many others — says what her family has is irreplaceable.

Esther Pedersen walks to a lookout on her land above the proposed site of the Site C dam. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

If you read its report closely, it appears the joint review panel did — at least on some level — grasp that sentiment. In coming to its conclusion that the earning potential of the Peace River Valley would appear to be highest as a reservoir, the panel notes it was unable to take into account “heartbreak (for residents who would be displaced from the land of their dreams).”

Question is: how do you put a price on heartbreak?

Back on the Ardill ranch, Renee just put $30,000 into fixing up an old barn.

“I think you have to go forward or give up. You can’t just sit there,” she says. “You have to act like you’re going to keep going or you give up. And I’m not very good at giving up.”

Renee and Dick Ardill at their ranch on the banks of the Peace River. Photo: Don Hoffmann

Ardill’s story is showcased on the StopSiteC website, which aims to gather petition signatures from citizens across the province. She wishes more British Columbians could see her part of the province.

“When you look at it on a map, it doesn’t look like all that big deal. But when you actually stand on the ground and look at it, it is a big deal,” she says.

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Proposed changes to B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) open the door to flooding the Peace Valley, which could feed a million people fruits and vegetables, according to an agricultural expert.

The Site C dam, if approved, would impact 13,000 hectares of agricultural land — including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the ALR, an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria.

Bill 24 would split B.C.'s ALR into two zones. Zone 1 land would continue to be protected for food production, while Zone 2 land could be opened to non-agricultural uses, including oil and gas development.

On Monday, farmers from the Kootenays converged on the B.C. legislature, protesting the changes and saying they hadn’t been consulted. And on Tuesday, 13 soil experts wrote to Premier Christy Clark warning the bill will put at risk some of the province's best farmland.

With the changes, “the land reserve will be considered toothless,” says professional agrologist Wendy Holm, who has 40 years of experience in agriculture economics and public policy. “It opens the door for Site C.”

The Peace Valley falls into Zone 2, which includes the Interior, Kootenay and North regions — despite being capable of growing the same crops as the Fraser and Okanagan valleys (including melons, tomatoes and corn).

“There’s enough land to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people,” Holm says of the Peace Valley. “There’s tremendous potential in the north.”

In a news release, the province said the changes would "provide farmers with more flexibility to support their farming operations" and "help farmers generate increased incomes and better support food production."

The ALR was created 40 years ago to preserve the province’s shrinking farmland in the face of rapid development pressures. Typically, to remove land from the reserve, approval is required from the province’s Agricultural Land Commission (ALC), which aims to conserve lands for food production.

But in December 2013, Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett wrote a letter to BC Hydro and the ALC seeking to block the commission’s involvement in the Site C review:

“The province is aware that one of the issues at the [JRP] hearing will be the effect of the project on agricultural land, some of which is within the Agricultural Land Reserve. I am writing to inform you that the government’s current view is that this process should not be duplicated … under the Agricultural Land Commission Act.”

However, the joint review panel assessing the proposal decided to request an opinion from the Agricultural Land Commission anyway — just days before its hearings finished.

“It’s the only large tract of vegetable land that’s not in production we have in the province,” says Holm, who was contracted by the Peace Valley Environmental Association to assess the Site C dam’s impact on agriculture. “We have to bring more land into production to meet our own food security needs.”

B.C. imports 57 per cent of fruits and vegetables consumed in the province that could be grown in the province, according to Holm’s presentation to the review panel.

“It’s not about what’s economic today,” she says. “This is land that forms part of the commons. This is part of the natural capital of our country.”

Holm says food prices are only going up, further increasing the importance of protecting agricultural land. “I think we’re going to see dramatically increasing food prices due to the droughts happening,” she says.

Some of the arable land in the Peace Valley is not currently farmed because the area has been under threat of flooding since the late 1950s, Holm says.

“Without the shadow of the dam, what is happening today would be different,” she says.

The Peace River already hosts two hydro dams — the WAC Bennett Dam, which began operating in 1968 and created the Williston Reservoir, the largest body of freshwater in B.C., and the Peace Canyon dam, completed in 1980.

In the 1980s, the Site C dam was considered by the independent BC Utilities Commission and turned down because the electricity it would produce was too expensive and not needed. In the ’90s, BC Hydro decided to suspend the project again because the need for power was still insufficient. The project may have been turned down by the utilities commission again, but in 2010 the provincial government removed Site C from the commission’s oversight.

The joint review panel is expected to issue its recommendation on the Site C dam in late April.

Photo: Downstream of the proposed Site C dam. Credit: Tuchodi via Flickr.

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