British Columbia had 87 high-risk dams with “significant deficiencies” in 2020, according to an audit released on Tuesday that warned the provincial government was not doing enough to ensure dams were safe. 

Among the 87 identified with deficiencies, the audit said that one required “immediate attention” by the dam owner, 24 needed “considerable work” despite having an owner that was not actively working to correct deficiencies, and 62 had owners that were actively working to correct deficiencies with “considerable work” needed to be compliant. The audit also found that these dams, on average, had been at a high risk level for 7.5 years. 

But the location of the high-risk dams remains a mystery.

Neither the Office of the Auditor General of B.C. nor the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development would say what areas were at risk. The provincial ministry is responsible for the safety of 1,900 dams that provide electricity, irrigation and flood control, including BC Hydro dams and about 20 dams constructed for oil and gas activities such as hydraulic fracking. (Not all oil and gas industry dams fall under the ministry’s jurisdiction.) 

The 35-page report by Auditor General Michael Pickup said the failure of 1,000 dams overseen by the ministry “can kill people and damage the environment and property.” “For the remaining 900 dams, the impact of failure is lower, only damaging the owner’s property.”

“We don’t want people to be alarmed and we weren’t out there looking at the particular safety of unique dams or anything like that,” Pickup said. “But this is a large government program … that is not working, frankly, as it is intended to by government — and I think people need to have a discussion around this with elected officials.”

Pickup said the report doesn’t identify the 87 dams with serious deficiencies because it covers the period from January 2019 to December 2020 and he wasn’t certain whether they were still at risk. “Presumably a number of things would likely have changed since the audit period,” he told reporters during a news conference.  

“So my suggestion would be if you’re looking for an up-to-date accounting … of how that 87 has changed … ask government themselves where this now stands.” 

Although Pickup said the public should not be alarmed, his report noted that dam failures could have serious consequences.

It classified the consequence of failure for 43 dams as “extreme,” while the consequences of failure for 84 dams was classified as “very high.” Another 234 dams had a “high” failure consequence classification, while 595 were considered to have “significant” consequences in the event of failure. 

“Failures can be caused by a single catastrophic event, such as an earthquake, or, more often, by a series of cumulative causes or events,” the report noted.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau alarmed by report

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau offered a blunt assessment of Pickup’s report, calling it “alarming” and urging the BC NDP government to address public safety concerns.

“And the way that they can do that is to be transparent,” Furstenau told The Narwhal. “To be proactively providing information about the dams that are not meeting these standards and communicating clearly about what steps they’re going to take to properly do their job as a regulator and properly protect the public.”

B.C. grants fracking company free pass to build illegal dams

The Narwhal asked the ministry for a list of the 87 dams, along with the locations, owners and purpose, but it declined to provide these details, instead sending an emailed response that said none of the 1,900 dams “pose an immediate risk nor are at an imminent threat of failure.”

“Over time, if compliance and enforcement are not effective at promoting dam owners to adhere to safety standards, these dams may become liabilities and the province will have to pay for corrective actions to occur to keep the public safe,” the ministry said in its email.

The ministry did not explain what it defines as a liability or whether it would include a dam failure that could lead to environmental damage or deaths.

Among other findings, the audit discovered:

• 196 dams were not listed in provincial government records; 
• there was no province-wide process to identify dams built without authorization;
• many dams didn’t meet regulatory requirements and the ministry’s tracking, and;
• follow-up on deficiencies was inadequate. 

“Neither the ministry nor dam owners will know if dams are ‘safe,’ ‘reasonably safe’ or ‘not safe’ if the ministry does not verify that dam safety review reports meet requirements and does not update the database with key information,” Pickup noted in the report, Oversight of Dam Safety in British Columbia.

“Nor will the ministry know about problems that need attention to make dams safe,” the report said. “For example, an officer learned of a dam safety review report that had a ‘not safe’ conclusion, but the previous officer had not flagged it for follow-up. It was two years before the officer learned the dam was not safe and took appropriate action.”

A total of 92 unauthorized water impoundments and dams have been built in northeast B.C. to service the oil and gas industry, in particular water-intensive fracking operations. This image shows an authorized Encana dam and reservoir near Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Site C not included in report

The audit did not include the troubled $16 billion Site C dam on the Peace River that is being built on a weak foundation — raising safety concerns in downstream communities — because the project is still under construction. 

Pickup’s report follows an investigation by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives which revealed that BC Hydro has known for well over a decade that the Peace Canyon dam on the Peace River is built on weak, unstable rock and that an earthquake triggered by a nearby natural gas industry fracking or disposal well operation could cause the dam to fail.

It also comes after the 2010 failure of the privately owned earthen Testalinden Dam in the Okanagan, which destroyed or damaged five homes and caused significant damage to crops and farm equipment, sending debris over 200 metres of Highway 97 and blocking several secondary roads. The Testalinden dam failure is estimated to have cost millions of dollars.

Top B.C. government officials knew Site C dam was in serious trouble over a year ago: FOI docs

The report found the ministry did not have a province-wide process to identify unauthorized dams that are built without a water licence. 

“The ministry discovered, by chance, up to 24 unauthorized dams per year, depending on the region,” the report observed. “For example, an unauthorized dam may be reported by a neighbour or a government employee who spots the dam while doing another task.”

The report also found that four out of 10 dam safety officers had a backlog of reports to review regarding the safety of high-consequence dams. While the average time to accept safety reports was 20 months, some took eight years. 

The ministry did not have complete and accurate information about dams it regulates, meaning that “it did not have all the information it needed for effective oversight,” the audit found. 

The ministry also did not adequately verify dam owner compliance with regulatory requirements, the report noted.  

“This increased the risk that dam owners might not meet regulatory safety requirements. It also increased the risk that their dams could threaten public safety.”

Audit made nine recommendations

Furstenau said the findings point to the chronic under-funding of the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.

“As indicated in this report, there is a lack of staff and capacity to do this work. And this is just one segment of that ministry’s responsibilities … this ministry seems to be deeply under-resourced.” 

“It’s yet another Auditor General report that identifies that this province is not doing what it needs to do when it comes to oversight regulation and enforcement of activities that are happening on the land base — and particularly industrial activities,” Furstenau said, pointing to a 2016 audit that found the government’s mines monitoring and inspection program was woefully inadequate and did not protect the province from significant environmental risks. 

The auditor general made nine recommendations to improve the ministry’s oversight of dam safety. Recommendations include improving processes to verify dam owner compliance with regulations and improved monitoring of compliance and enforcement activities. 

The ministry said it accepted all the recommendations.

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.

The cancellation of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline in early October had major consequences for a rather unexpected player: Manitoba Hydro.

The company had been counting on the energy demand from the pipeline, and now the cancellation is putting extra strain on a company already plagued by debt and in the middle of building an $8.7 billion dam.

Back in 2014, the provincial utility company anticipated that almost 40 per cent of electricity generated by its proposed 695-megawatt Keeyask dam in northern Manitoba would be allocated to “pipeline load” for the Alberta Clipper, Line 3 and Energy East pipelines.

Specifically, the electricity would be used to run pumping stations, which force crude oil through pipelines via a series of pumps and motors. Among those pumping stations were those that would move bitumen from the oilsands to New Brunswick through the Energy East pipeline.

But Energy East is now officially dead.

A recent document filed by Manitoba Hydro to the province’s public utilities board estimated that will result in a loss of 534 gigawatt-hours in annual demand, equivalent to 12 per cent of the dam’s production — which comes at an awfully bad time given the utility’s ongoing debt issues, proposed rate hikes and cost overruns, which have resulted in the utility laying off  900 staff.

Building Renewables for the Fossil Fuel Industry

The connection between the Keeyask Dam and the Energy East pipeline raises important questions about renewable energy projects that are built, at least in part, to meet the demands of the fossil fuel industry.

On the one hand, powering the industry with cleaner electricity is a step in the right direction. But on the other hand, building new electricity, even when it is renewable, has serious impacts, and hydro is no exception.

It’s not the first time a hydro dam has been proposed to meet the electricity demands of the fossil fuel industry. In British Columbia, the rationale given for the controversial $10.7 billion Site C dam has at times included powering the liquefied natural gas export industry and Alberta’s oilsands.

What has been talked about a lot less in B.C. is that the new Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline would use 1,046 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year (PDF, page 64), or the equivalent of about 20 per cent of the production of the Site C dam (about half of that power will be consumed in B.C. with the other half being consumed in Alberta).

In B.C. that power will be sold at a subsidized rate and is expected to result in a cost to BC Hydro of $27 million a year. In Alberta, the Trans Mountain pipeline will use nearly a quarter of the new generating capacity created by the newly announced wind contracts.

Shifting Justifications for New Dams

Manitoba Hydro’s game plan for the Keeyask dam became clear during two sets of hearings during late 2013 and early 2014.

Peter Kulchyski, professor of Native studies at the University of Manitoba and long-time critic of impacts of hydroelectric projects on northern Indigenous communities, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that Manitoba Hydro presented two very different narratives.

The first presentations — made to the Clean Environment Commission, which explores social and environmental impacts — saw the energy utility boast about the potential for new hydro projects to help fight climate change by exporting electricity to other jurisdictions and displacing the use of coal and natural gas.

In 2016-17, Manitoba Hydro exported $460 million of electricity to other jurisdictions. But that number has effectively flatlined due to the shale gas boom in the United States. In its most recent annual report, Manitoba Hydro listed “loss of export market access” as one of its most significant risks, alongside “catastrophic infrastructure failure” and “extreme drought.”

Kulchyski said the review of the project then moved on to the Public Utilities Board, which looks at economic modelling. At that point, some of the early financials from the newly built and way over budget 211-megawatt Wuskwatim Dam were emerging. They weren’t good.

At the time, Kulchyski said the Wuskwatim Dam was selling power at four cents per kilowatt-hour while it was costing seven cents per kilowatt-hour to actually produce power. The dam hadn’t ever been profitable (and still hasn’t been to this day, resulting in a restructuring of the agreement with local First Nations).

That’s when the “pipeline load” first entered the picture, Kulchyski said.

“As they were scrambling for where they would sell the power, they publicly came out saying they could sell power to the pipelines that are being built,” he said. “On one hand they’re fighting climate change, on the other hand they’re quite willing to sell to the pipelines.”

The connection between the Keeyask Dam and the Energy East pipeline raises important questions about renewable energy projects that are built, at least in part, to meet the demands of the fossil fuel industry. https://t.co/zn9yyRNL9w

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 10, 2018

Manitoba Could Sell Excess Power to Saskatchewan

Despite these concerns, Keeyask is still being constructed, anticipated to be in operation by late 2021. A $5 billion transmission line, Bipole III, is also being built to transport electricity from the dam to the south of the province.

Enbridge — which owns both the Alberta Clipper and Line 3 pipelines — didn’t respond to a request for comment by DeSmog Canada.

Manitoba Hydro still expects Keeyask to have a “pipeline load” of more than 1,000 gigawatt-hours, meaning that one-quarter of the dam’s capacity (4,400 gigawatt-hours) will go to helping pump Alberta bitumen through Line 3 and Alberta Clipper.

That leaves a lot of excess electricity without a clear market though, which could require future ratepayers to cover the difference. Manitoba Hydro is already requesting significant hikes in rates — currently pushing for 7.9 per cent increases per year until 2023-24.

Electrification Will Bring New Demand: Clean Energy Analyst

But there are plenty of opportunities for Manitoba to use the excess electricity from Keeyask in positive ways, Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada. That includes moving to electric vehicles (including freight trucks and buses) and heating buildings with electricity instead of with natural gas.

“In a hydro-dominated system like Manitoba where you’ve got plentiful, affordable, clean power, the emissions benefit of applying that to transportation is particularly significant,” Woynillowicz said. “We certainly need to be capitalizing on that from a climate change perspective.”

He added there’s also the potential for increased exports to the U.S. and other Canadian provinces —especially Saskatchewan, given that it’s right next door and “still has one of the dirtiest electricity grids in Canada.”

“There’s still a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of cleaning up Saskatchewan’s system,” he said. “Definitely one element of that could be increased imports of hydro from Manitoba.”

Canada May Need 150 More Keeyasks to Meet 2050 Climate Targets

Canada’s mid-century long-term low-greenhouse gas development strategy reported that over 100,000 megawatts of additional hydro capacity will be required by 2050 to reach greenhouse gas reduction targets.

That’s equivalent to almost 150 Keeyask dams in capacity.

Canada is the third-largest hydro producer in the world, with over 80,000 megawatts of capacity already in place. One of the benefits of large quantities of hydropower is its ‘dispatchable’ nature, meaning reservoirs essentially act as giant batteries that can be drawn from when needed.

ICYMI: What’s the Future of Hydroelectric Power in Canada?

Yet often left unaddressed by proponents of additional hydroelectric power are the devastating impacts that dams can have on local and Indigenous communities, especially the ability to hunt, fish, trap and gather on traditional lands and waters.

Opponents of hydro dams also point out the high costs of building large dams crowd out small-scale and more localized sources of energy like wind, solar and geothermal.

And Manitoba, a hydro-heavy province, hasn’t seriously explored renewable electricity sources other than hydro. In 2014, a former NDP energy minister accused the utility of making it “virtually impossible to build wind [power] here.” The province has just 260 MW of installed wind energy capacity, less than New Brunswick.

But outside of rapid innovations in battery storage, transmission lines and the emergence  of alternative low-carbon baseload power (such as geothermal), it’s unclear how Canada will dodge the conflict over hydro.

There are some obvious options to help reduce demand, such as energy efficiency retrofits for existing buildings and reducing industrial load.

Woynillowicz noted that the biggest chunks of new demand come from large industrial projects. For instance, in B.C., a single large LNG plant could consume the equivalent of all of the power created by the Site C dam.

Ultimately, the public needs to know the planned end use of new electricity projects before being able to form an educated opinion on them.

With files from Emma Gilchrist.

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.

Originally published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

More than half of nearly 50 dams that fossil fuel companies built in recent years without first obtaining the proper permits had serious structural problems that could have caused many of them to fail.

And now, B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), which appeared to be asleep at the switch in allowing the unlicensed dams to be built in the first place, is frantically trying to figure out what to do about them after the fact.

Information about the unprecedented, unregulated dam-building spree is contained in a raft of documents that the OGC released in response to Freedom of Information requests filed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The documents obtained by the CCPA, along with other materials recently posted on the OGC’s website, reveal that 28 of at least 48 unlicensed dams on Crown (meaning public) lands had significant structural flaws or other problems belatedly identified by Commission staff.

All of the dams were built to trap freshwater used by energy companies drilling and fracking for gas in northeast B.C. In some fracking operations in the region, companies are pressure-pumping the equivalent of 64 Olympic-size swimming pools of water underground to break open gas-bearing rock formations, triggering earthquakes in the process.

ICYMI: A Dam Big Problem: Fracking Companies Build Dozens of Unauthorized Dams in B.C.’s Northeast

The OGC paved the way for the construction of the dams by granting companies numerous permits under the Land Act to use Crown or public lands to “store water.”

But in approving the applications, OGC personnel failed to ask basic, critical questions: How did companies intend to store the water? In tanks? In pits? Behind dams?

Since the OGC didn’t ask, the companies didn’t disclose that they planned to build dams — lots of them.

Nor did they disclose that in many cases the water sources for their dams would be creeks and other water bodies that the companies were not entitled to draw from because they hadn’t applied for, let alone received, water licences.

Since they hadn’t applied for those licences they weren’t legally entitled to build the dams.

Petronas Proposed to Dig Pit, Built Seven-Storey Dam Instead

In one notable case, documents obtained by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives indicate that one of the companies, Progress Energy, also mischaracterized what it proposed to build.

In that case, Progress Energy, a subsidiary of the Malaysian state-owned corporation Petronas, filed documents with the OGC indicating where a water storage “pit” was to be excavated on land just to the west of the Alaska Highway and a short distance south of the Sikani river.

The document was submitted to the Blueberry River First Nation as part of the company and government’s “consultation” record with the First Nation.

Instead of an excavated pit or hole in the ground, what was built was an earthen dam 23 metres high, or roughly as tall as a seven-storey apartment building.

In approving the applications, BC regulatory personnel failed to ask basic, critical questions: How did companies intend to store the water? In tanks? In pits? Behind dams? https://t.co/fXMkNnhsfy

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 18, 2017

Regulator Retroactively Assessing, Approving and Denying Dam Permits

Having allowed one unauthorized dam after another to be built, the OGC confronts a daunting regulatory challenge of its own making. In some cases years after the fact, Commission personnel must retroactively approve, deny, or order modifications to dozens of dams that are already built on Crown lands.

The after-the-fact review process will include ruling on the environmental and health and safety risks posed by dams whose engineering specifications and construction plans were never vetted by any provincial agency before construction. It will also include retroactively reviewing, approving, or denying dozens of pending water licence applications.

How First Nations will be consulted in all of this remains unclear, as the consultations will also occur well after the fact.

Regulator Fieldwork Reveals Serious Problems at Dam Facilities

Less than two weeks after the CCPA published its initial research on the unauthorized dams last spring — and after numerous media outlets picked up on the story — OGC personnel stepped up efforts to understand just how structurally unsound some of the dams built on its watch might be.

That effort included sending personnel by helicopter just two weeks after the story broke to 47 suspected unlicensed dams. These inspections (which took place on May 16 and 17, 2017) occurred shortly after heavy rains had pummelled the region and fossil fuel companies had been warned by the OGC to protect their infrastructure against possible flood damage.

ICYMI: B.C. Regulator Finds Numerous Frack Water Dams Unsafe, At Risk of Failure

The fieldwork uncovered serious problems at seven facilities, or 15 per cent of all dams visited. Among the most significant problems were dams built without spillways to safely divert water away from the dam’s reservoirs when they became dangerously full.

Building a dam without a spillway can cause it to fail. It is the residential construction equivalent of building a house without a door. There’s no safe exit point.

Progress Energy Dam Danger Spotted By Chance

At one Progress Energy dam, the inspectors arrived to find a work crew using four pumps to partially drain a reservoir holding back nearly 50 Olympic swimming pools worth of water.

The pumped water was racing downhill away from the dam toward a steep bluff beside Blair Creek, about a 40-minute helicopter ride north and west of Charlie Lake. The pumped water was rapidly eroding the bluff. With no properly designed spillway for the dam’s water, the company’s jerry-rigged pumping operation was in danger of causing the bluff to destabilize and slide into the creek.

Only by chance did the inspectors arrive in time to spot the “erosion and slope stability” problem unfolding near the creek, the FOI documents reveal. The inspectors phoned Progress Energy’s Calgary offices and told the company to stop pumping the water.

According to the FOI documents, Progress Energy was responsible for building five of the seven dams that were issued orders following the May inspections. ConocoPhillips Canada Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of ConocoPhillips, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, was responsible for the other two.

Progress was also identified in the inspection reports as having 14 additional dams with evident problems.

Dams Constructed Without Engineering Designs and Plans, Docs Reveal

Noted “deficiencies” at these other 14 dams included no armoured spillways, evident slumping of earthen dam walls, “erosion and cracking” issues, no water licences having been applied for before the dams were built, and two instances where the dams were so tall that they qualified as “major projects” under B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act.

In an undated “summary of information” written some time after the May 2017 inspections numerous concerns were raised about Progress’s dams. The summary was penned by OGC hydrologist Allan Chapman, OGC compliance and enforcement officer Ken McLean, and the OGC’s recently-named and first-ever dam safety officer Justin Anderson.

“We are aware that Progress Energy submitted water licence applications for many dams on December 23, 2016,” the memo reads. In point of fact, Progress had actually applied for 13 water licences that day — an exceedingly rare event in and of itself, to say nothing of the fact that each and every application involved water rights at dams that the company had built without obtaining the licences first.

“Chapman is generally aware that the Progress Energy dams were constructed without engineering designs and plans, without clear adherence to and consistency with dam safety requirements, and that some have an array of deficiencies associated with fill and berm instability, and that some (possibly most) lack basic dam construction standards such as spillways or outlets designed for a specified inflow.”

Of the 47 dams inspected in mid May, three turned out to not be dams. Another three were definitely dams and had problems. But in those three cases, the companies had essentially deactivated the dams at some point after unspecified problems arose.

That brought the number of dams that the inspectors dealt with over the two days of fieldwork down to 41. The 41 dams were all located in the Montney region, which is in the more southern portion of B.C.’s vast northeast region.

Since those May inspections, further fieldwork was done. OGC personnel inspected a number more dams, including four built by Nexen Energy (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned oil and gas giant CNOOC) in the Fort Nelson area further north from where the May inspections took place.

As a result of this second round of inspections, the OGC announced on November 14, 2017 that Nexen had been ordered to “remove” virtually all of the water impounded behind the four dams. These unlicensed dams, according to a short bulletin published on the OGC’s webpage, all showed troubling signs of deterioration, including “slumping, surface erosion and surface water channel erosion” problems.

Nexen was ordered to drain all “live water” from behind the problematic dams. Live water refers to the water impounded by a dam that is above ground level and therefore capable of escaping should a dam fail.

Two other companies were issued orders that day as well. Saguaro Resources Ltd. (a private, Calgary-based gas production company) was ordered to take action at two of its dams, and ConocoPhillips at one.

Between the May inspections and the subsequent inspections further to the north, it now appears that there are at least 48 unlicensed dams on Crown lands, with an as-yet undisclosed number more built on private property, primarily farmlands.

Of the 48 Crown land dams, a total of 16 or one third have been hit with retroactive orders. Fourteen of those orders were made by the OGC, following belated inspections of the dams. (The orders include the seven issued in May and the seven issued in November.)

Dams Skirted Environmental Assessments Under B.C. Laws

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO), has issued a further two orders. Those orders, as spelled out in documents first obtained by the CCPA, apply to the two largest dams built by Progress Energy — the previously mentioned 23-metre-high dam, known as the Lily dam, and another nearby dam known as the Town dam, which is more than 16 metres high.

Because both dams exceeded 15 metres in height, they qualified as “major projects” under B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act, and therefore should have undergone provincial environmental assessments before they were built.

ICYMI: Fracking Company Ordered to Drain Two Unauthorized Dams in B.C.’s Northeast

Because the company never referred its plans to the Environmental Assessment Office before commencing construction, and because the Oil and Gas Commission failed to stop the company from building the dams, the EAO launched an investigation.

On October 31, the EAO ordered the company to drain virtually all of the water from behind these two very large dams and to keep water levels at no more than 10 per cent of their holding capacity, adding that the company was “not compliant” with Section 8.1 of the Environmental Assessment Act.

In the meantime, the EAO continues to consider an extraordinary application by Progress Energy to retroactively “exempt” the two dams from having to undergo environmental assessments at all.

The CCPA and a number of other organizations filed documents with the EAO recommending that the company’s request be denied. The EAO is expected to make its decision early in 2018.

Under the Environmental Assessment Act, companies found to have violated the act can be subject to fines of up to $100,000 for a first offence and subsequent offences can triggers fines of up to $200,000.

Unpermitted Dams ‘Disconcerting’: Premier Horgan

Commenting recently on the proliferation of unlicensed dams during an appearance on the Shaw TV political affairs show, Voice of BC, Premier John Horgan said that “the revelation” that nearly 50 dams were built on the OGC’s watch in violation of existing regulations was “disconcerting.”

He added that both Environment Minister George Heyman and Energy Minister Michelle Mungall were aware of the issue and were “working together to try and find ways to make sure that enforcement and compliance can be done in a way that gives the public confidence.”

ICYMI: Coalition Calls for Public Inquiry Into B.C. Fracking

“At the end of the day, our systems fail if the public has no confidence in them,” Horgan said. “We’re going to do what we can to make sure that the existing Oil and Gas Commission regulatory regime is either being enforced, and if it’s not, we’ll bring in others to do so.”

Horgan’s comments also came after numerous non-governmental organizations, environmental groups, physician associations and First Nations called on the provincial government to launch a public inquiry into fracking, including how effectively the OGC regulates its fossil fuel company clients.

Image: The largest unauthorized dam built by Progress Energy. Photo: Ben Parfitt

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.

A subsidiary of Petronas, the Malaysian state-owned petro giant courted by the B.C. government, has built at least 16 unauthorized dams in northern B.C. to trap hundreds of millions of gallons of water used in its controversial fracking operations.

The 16 dams are among “dozens” that have been built by Petronas and other companies without proper authorizations, a senior dam safety official with the provincial government told the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which began investigating the problem in late March after receiving a tip from someone with knowledge of how widespread the problem is.

Two of the dams built by Progress Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Petronas, are towering earthen structures that exceed the height of five-storey apartment buildings. Petronas has proposed building a massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Prince Rupert, which if built would result in dramatic increases in fracking and industrial water use throughout northeast B.C.

The two dams are so large that they should have been subject to review by B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO). Only if a review concluded that the projects could proceed would the EAO have issued a certificate, and only then could the company have moved on to get the necessary authorizations from other provincial agencies.

But nothing close to that happened because the company never submitted its plans to the EAO before the dams were built.

Now, five years after construction on the two dams began, the CCPA has learned that B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office has belatedly launched an investigation. Other agencies are also scrambling to figure out what to do as evidence emerges of extensive unauthorized dam-building on their watch.

Another 13 Progress Energy dams are being retroactively reviewed by the Oil and Gas Commission (OGC).

That’s because on December 23 of last year, the company applied simultaneously to the province for 13 water licences to impound water behind dams that it had already built.

The huge challenge now before the OGC, which has authority to grant water licences to Progress Energy and other natural gas companies operating in the region, is that under BC’s old Water Act as well as the new Water Sustainability Act, companies are not allowed to build dams that impound freshwater without first obtaining authorizations.

It now falls to the OGC well after the fact to decide whether the water licences will be granted. Because engineering plans for the dams were not submitted to provincial dam safety officials before the structures were built, the OGC must also retroactively determine whether the dams are structurally sound, and if they are not, whether they should be ordered shut down.

The latter is a distinct possibility. During its investigation the CCPA uncovered evidence that one of the dams built by Progress/Petronas showed signs of failure last year, which would have sent a wall of water and mud rushing toward a gas-processing plant not far downstream. The OGC subsequently ordered the company to dewater the dam.

Complicating matters considerably, the dams are located close to natural gas industry drilling and fracking sites. Fracking involves pumping immense amounts of water under extreme pressure belowground to “liberate” gas trapped in dense rock formations. Throughout northeast B.C., the intensity of that pressure-pumping has triggered numerous earthquakes, including a 4.6 magnitude tremor at a Progress/Petronas fracking operation in August 2015 that was felt 180 kilometres away.

That means in addition to assessing the general engineering integrity of dozens of unauthorized dams, the OGC must also consider how seismically sound they are as well.

A Dam Big Problem: #Fracking Companies Build Dozens of Unauthorized Dams in B.C.'s Northeast https://t.co/RO9FW9Oi4P #bcpoli #BCelxn17 pic.twitter.com/ofeVSt0z87

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 3, 2017

Progress/Petronas Dams Just The Beginning

Progress/Petronas is not alone. Details on many more unpermitted dams are expected to emerge in the coming months as other natural gas companies apply retroactively for water licences.

The full extent of the unauthorized dam building is not yet publicly known. But according to Jim Mattison, a former comptroller of water rights for the provincial government, the extensive network of energy industry dams and other water impoundment structures is vast. And, to date, largely unregulated.

During a phone interview on April 20, Mattison said there are “certainly more” than 100 large dams that have been built by or for energy companies operating in the region. At the end of the day, he says, additional fieldwork may reveal that there are “200 or more” such facilities.

Mattison has reached that conclusion after researching the problem under contract to B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO). The research includes analysis of satellite imagery and remote sensing data.

Mattison said that work shows that there are literally “thousands” of artificial water bodies across northeast B.C. The list includes everything from small dams and dugouts built by landowners to capture and divert water on private farmlands that is subsequently sold to fracking companies; borrow pits used to excavate earth for roadbeds and other oil and gas company infrastructure; and, at the top of the pyramid, massive earthen dams built on crown lands by Progress/Petronas and others.

This vast and dispersed network of water impoundment structures is likely to have extensive effects on everything from aquifers, to ecologically unique and sensitive muskeg systems, to water levels in fish-bearing streams and rivers, to beaver ponds and wetlands, and to fish, animal and plant communities of importance to numerous First Nations.

Problem Known – Public Not Notified

Records obtained by the CCPA indicate that the Oil and Gas Commission, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office are all aware of numerous unauthorized dams, and that they may contravene key provincial laws and regulations including the Water Sustainability Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, and provincial dam safety regulations.

Even though some of the dams may pose significant environmental, public health and safety risks, the CCPA has found no documentation that a single provincial government agency or ministry has issued a press release or safety advisory about the problem. Nor has it found any evidence that the government has charged or fined any companies for the unauthorized dams that they’ve built.

Evidence that Progress Energy and other companies had built numerous unauthorized dams began to surface last spring, but without fanfare. In a rarely read quarterly report, the OGC published a 24-word “summary” of an order it had issued to Progress Energy.

The summary said:

“Remove excess water from storage structure, and submit engineering assessment and certification of structural integrity in accordance with the Dam Safety Regulation.”

It ended with two words: “Compliance ongoing.”

The offending dam’s location was vaguely listed as “Town.”

In mid-April the CCPA requested a copy of the full order from Graham Currie, the OGC’s director of corporate affairs. Currie was also asked to comment on Progress’s water licence applications and the EAO investigation. On April 21, he refused to provide any information, saying in an e-mail that the OGC had to “remain impartial as a government agency” during the writ period or interregnum. He recommended applying for a copy of the full order by submitting a formal Freedom of Information request, a process that typically takes months. Typically, government rules restrict the release of information during the election period, but the rules usually apply only to Cabinet documents.

In response to questions sent by e-mail, Progress Energy communications advisor, Eryn Rizzoli, acknowledged that the company had been ordered to de-water the dam.

“Progress Energy has complied with all conditions as detailed in Order 2016-003 49(1)(b). Dewatering of this facility was completed in May 2016. The facility is not in use at this time,” Rizzoli wrote.

 “Progress actively assesses and monitors the company’s entire water impoundment inventory,” Rizzoli added. “This includes conducting engineering and geotechnical assessments and submission to relevant government and regulatory agencies, where required.”

Contacted by phone on April 5, Scott Morgan, head of FLNRO’s Dam Safety Section, recounted learning more about the scope of unauthorized dam building by Progress and other companies during a conference call last summer. On the call were several OGC officials, one of whom said at one point: “By the way, we have a problem.”

As the call progressed, Morgan recounted hearing that there were “dozens” of dams that had been built without proper authorizations, including at least nine that were “over nine metres high.” Two of the larger dams were more than 15 metres high, which meant they should have been reviewed by the Environmental Assessment Office before being built.

Fracking Operations Drive Corporate Rush For Freshwater

Petronas and other companies drilling and fracking for natural gas in the Montney shale gas play in B.C.’s Peace River region now pressure-pump up to 160,000 cubic metres of water underground at individual gas wells.

The largest of the Progress/Petronas dams holds almost enough water to complete one major frack job, meaning it holds considerably more water than that which spilled from the Testalinden dam, a 10-metre high structure that failed near the community of Oliver in 2010, triggering a mudslide that destroyed five homes but miraculously took no lives.

In the event Petronas decides to invest in its proposed Prince Rupert LNG facility, it will need access to considerably more freshwater.

Collectively, the 13 water licence applications filed by Progress Energy on December 23 amount to a significant water grab, an attempt to corral up to 683,000 cubic metres of freshwater for use in the company’s fracking operations.

Only the most basic information on the applications is publicly available. But what is clear is that Progress/Petronas intends to store stream water at each location. In many cases, the water source is unnamed. But in other cases, streams are listed including Caribou, Barker, Apsassin and Grewatch creeks. The database records say nothing to indicate that in all 13 cases, Progress Energy was applying for permission to store water behind dams that it had already built.

Field Visit Confirms: Dam First, Water Application Second

The information is contained in a searchable database maintained by FLNRO’s Water Allocation Section. The Ministry retains powers to issue water licences to all applicants except fossil fuel companies, which apply to the OGC for such authorizations. B.C.’s oil and gas industry is the only entity in the province that has its own dedicated regulator when it comes to water authorizations.

The CCPA asked the Water Allocation Section for the precise geographical coordinates for Progress Energy’s new water licence applications. The coordinates were then used to locate one of the sites, about a half-hour helicopter’s journey to the northwest of Charlie Lake, near Fort St. John.

Eventually, after flying over brown stubbly hayfields, ranging cattle and remote farms, dusty grey aspen forests, dark spruce trees and myriad natural gas company operations, a distinct rectangular structure with large earthen berms was spotted in the distance.

An unauthorized Progress Energy dam where millions of gallons of freshwater was found impounded in early April. It is among “dozens" of unpermitted dams spread across northern B.C. Photo © Garth Lenz, all rights reserved.

Closing in on the site, it was clear that massive amounts of earth had been excavated to make walls that topped out at about nine metres in height. The sloped walls or berms had trapped an enormous amount of freshwater that was coated in a thin sheet of ice on a cool mid-April afternoon. Water could be seen trickling into the reservoir along a dark brown muddy industrial road down which a large yellow excavator was making its way.

The dam had been strategically built to create a new reservoir that would capture freshwater flowing downhill. Clearly as far as Progress Energy’s “application” for Water Licence 9000226 was concerned, the dam was already built and the water already impounded.

According to the scant information available on the government’s website on water licence applications, the dam at the site is capable of supplying 135,475 cubic metres of freshwater. It is the single-largest application for water storage of the 13 Progress Energy has retroactively applied to have approved.

Following the field visit, Progress confirmed in an e-mail to the CCPA that there are “existing fresh water storage structures” at the 13 locations and that last year’s passage of the new Water Sustainability Act “necessitated” that the company now apply for water licences at those locations.

Progress did not elaborate on why it felt that under the old Water Act it was unnecessary for the company to apply to the government before building its dams.

First Nations Consultation?

Almost all of B.C.’s natural gas deposits are located in the northeast of the province, where local First Nations are signatories to the historic Treaty 8. Signatories to the treaty include the Blueberry River First Nation. The Nation is currently before the courts in a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit in which it is seeking compensation for the “cumulative” environmental damages to its traditional lands and waters from a host of industrial developments including natural gas drilling and fracking operations, hydroelectric dams, mines and logging activities.

Given that so many dams were built without proper oversight, First Nations including Blueberry River are unlikely to have been properly notified or consulted about what the companies intended to do on their traditional lands. For example, had proper protocols been followed, water licence applications would have been turned over to First Nations for review and consultation well in advance of such licences being granted, let alone dams being built.

Conflicting Accounts

During a short telephone conversation in early April, EAO project assessment manager Teresa Morris confirmed the two massive Progress Energy dams are being investigated, that Progress is aware that the unauthorized dams are under scrutiny, and that the company had indicated to the EAO that it would apply to have the projects “exempt” from the EAO process.

At present, there is nothing publicly available on the EAO website indicating that the unpermitted dams are being looked into by the agency.

Morris said the Progress dams would be listed on an EAO registry of projects if and when Progress Energy applies to have them retroactively exempted from EAO review.

Asked if the EAO had received such an exemption request, Morris said in early April and reconfirmed on April 18: “No we have not. When we do, a public webpage will be established.” She referred all further questions to David Karn, a senior communications officer in government communications and public engagement with the Ministry of Environment. Contacted on April 28, Karn said that the interregnum period prevented him from commenting.

A listing by the EAO would be the first indication that a provincial environmental agency was reviewing dams built by one of the biggest LNG proponents in the province.

According to Progress Energy, however, the company has already filed its exemption applications. In response to questions from the CCPA, Progress Energy’s Eryn Rizzoli wrote:

“The British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office is reviewing two project descriptions submitted by Progress in accordance with the Environmental Assessment Act and Reviewable Projects Regulation.

 “Progress Energy has requested an exemption from the full review process for two existing fresh water storage structures that have been in service for several years without any incident or failure.”

The CCPA has yet to receive a response from the province explaining why the EAO’s office is saying one thing and Progress is saying another.

OGC to Decide Safety of Gas Industry Dams

Until recently, responsibility for the safety of all dams in the province, including any built by fracking companies, rested with dam safety officials in FLNRO. Proper procedure required the companies to first apply to the OGC for a water licence, and then for dam-design and building plans to be submitted to FLNRO for review and approval.

But that has recently changed. Last year, former provincial water comptroller, Glen Davidson, granted an OGC request for one of its staff to be designated a dam safety officer.

The only two dams that may fall outside the OGC’s purview are the two massive structures currently under investigation by the EAO.

Three years ago, Davidson appeared before the Joint Review Panel, which had been convened to review the Site C hydroelectric project. During his presentation, Davidson noted that all dams “are inherently dangerous structures” but that risks “can be minimized and managed.”

“I think surprisingly to most folks, on average, we get about one dam failure a year in B.C., but most of these are very, very low consequence and they probably don't even make the papers, so most people are not aware of them,” Davidson said.

One tool to minimize risks that higher consequence dams could fail, Davidson said, is for dam safety officials to review engineering specifications on dams before they are built. Davidson noted that provincial dam safety officials have internal capacity to do that, but that there is also precedent when dam safety officials feel it is warranted to hire independent engineers to do more rigorous assessments.

Davidson noted that when his office had to deal with many independent power producers and their plans to build run-of-river dams, the office hired “an independent engineer that reported to the Province. And we asked that independent engineer to review the designs, the design drawings and give the Province advice on subsequent approvals.”

The precedent is there, then, for the OGC to insist that independent engineers be brought in to advise on the quality and the safety of the dozens of dams built by Progress/Petronas and others.

Implications

As investigations continue on at least three fronts, provincial government officials must now decide just how many companies may have broken rules and what the consequences of breaking those rules should be, but also how government regulation of the industry could have broken down as badly as it did. 

Under the provincial Environmental Assessment Act, a company breaks the law when it builds anything that is a “reviewable project” under the Act, without first obtaining permits to do so. A first offence can trigger a $100,000 fine. All subsequent offences can trigger fines of up to $200,000.

Penalties for companies found guilty of “general offences” of the provincial Water Sustainability Act can be far more severe. If a company “without lawful authority . . . diverts water from a stream or aquifer” or if it “constructs, maintains, operates or uses works” that have not been authorized, it can be fined up to $200,000 and personnel can be jailed for up to six months. If the company is found guilty of an “ongoing offence” the penalty may be a $200,000 fine per day.

The consequences for “high penalty offences” under the act are even more severe. If a company “constructs, places, maintains or makes use of an obstruction in the channel of a stream without authority to do so”, the penalty can be up to a $1 million fine and one-year prison sentence. The fine for a continuing high penalty offence can be as much as $1 million per day.

The province’s Dam Safety Regulation also itemizes numerous requirements for companies building dams to ensure their safe operation following construction, the violation of which can result in fines of up to $200,000 for general offences and up to $1 million for major offences.

“The problem here goes way beyond whether or not one company broke the law,” Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre says. “The problem is that vast swathes of the landscape – of entire ecosystems, of entire hydrological systems – are disrupted, likely permanently.”

“The province still doesn’t have a handle on the scope of the risks.  And they are making feeble attempts to deal with this region-wide disaster,” Sandborn added.

Knowledge that so many dams have been built across northeast B.C. raises many questions. In the coming weeks, the CCPA will strive to obtain answers to those questions.

 How widespread is the construction of unauthorized dams by energy companies?

Which companies are engaged in building unauthorized dams?

Where are these dams, and how large are they?

Which dams are now under retroactive review by the Environmental Assessment Office and/or Oil and Gas Commission?

Why have these reviews and investigations not been made more public? (Only following a tip by a person with inside knowledge did the CCPA begin this investigation and gain information needed to complete this report.)

Why do no fines or penalties appear to have been levied to date?

How many dams have been decommissioned and where are they?

Does it make sense for the OGC to both issue permits to oil and gas companies allowing them to drill and frack for natural gas and to be the public’s environmental and public health and safety watchdog as well?

Or has the time come to turn that important monitoring and enforcement role over to an arms length agency?

With at least dozens of unpermitted dams already built in the province’s northeast fracking fields, the time has come for answers to such questions and a whole host more.

Photo: ©Garth Lenz

Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. This investigation was undertaken as part of the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP). The CMP is a six-year research and public engagement initiative jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ B.C. and Saskatchewan Offices, and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute. This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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People have harnessed energy from moving water for thousands of years.

Greeks used various types of water wheels to grind grain in mills more than 2,000 years ago.

In the late 1800s, people figured out how to harness the power to produce electricity.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, hydropower has expanded, producing about 17 per cent of the world’s electricity by 2014 and about 85 per cent of renewable energy — and it shows no signs of slowing.

According to the online magazine WaterWorld, “An expected 3,700 major dams may more than double the total electricity capacity of hydropower to 1,700 GW within the next two decades,” — including in my home province of B.C., where the government has started a third dam on the Peace River at Site C.

“Hydropower is the most important and widely used renewable source of energy,” the U.S. Geological Survey says.

But how “green” is hydropower and how viable is it in a warming world with increasing water fluctuations and shortages? To some extent, it depends on the type of facility.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions notes some large dams are used mainly for water storage or flood control with power generation an additional function, while some are used primarily to generate electricity. Small hydro such as run-of-river is installed on running water and doesn’t use water stored in reservoirs. Pumped storage facilities don’t generate additional energy, but store energy by pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher one when demand and price are low, sometimes using renewable energy, and release water through turbines when price and demand are high. All have varying environmental impacts.

One of the biggest trade-offs with large-scale hydro facilities is that building them often means flooding land used for farming and human communities. Damming rivers also impedes fish — even with technologies like fish ladders — and can harm wildlife habitat and alter river temperatures, dissolved oxygen levels and flows.

While hydropower creates fewer pollution and climate problems than fossil fuel power, it isn’t entirely clean. Clearing vegetation to build a dam and flood land can release greenhouse gases. And as vegetation decays and water levels fluctuate, methane — a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide — can build up and escape from reservoirs.

Ironically, although hydropower is seen as an energy source that helps slow global warming, in many areas its viability is threatened by climate change. Rising greenhouse gas emissions and a warming world affect the entire hydrological cycle — surface and ground water, glaciers, precipitation, runoff and evaporation. Shifting precipitation patterns and increased droughts are changing water levels in rivers and behind hydro dams.

The massive Hoover Dam on the Colorado River is operating at 30 per cent capacity, and new turbines have to be installed at lower elevation because of low precipitation and drought. In Nepal, “low water levels rendered a brand-new dam project ineffective and cut off the water supply farther downstream,” said John Matthews, director of fresh water and adaptation at Conservation International, in Scientific American.

Matthews and co-authors of a study in the journal PLoS Biology wrote that climate change puts 40 per cent of hydro development investments at risk. They recommend an approach to dams and hydro that takes climate change into account, by building projects in stages so adjustments can be made as more is known about climate patterns, or by “building with nature” rather than on top of it.

Meanwhile, as more environmentally benign power technologies become increasingly cost-effective and viable, the U.S. is removing older dams, many of which don’t have fish ladders, because costs to maintain and repair them are too high, as are environmental impacts.

Hydropower will remain part of the clean-energy equation, but we need to find the least disruptive, most efficient methods. Scientist Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of California’s Pacific Institute, says the key to supplying energy to growing populations in a warming world will be to use a diversity of power sources.

“We need to design our energy systems to be resilient in the face of growing uncertainty about technology and climate and national security and all of the factors that affect energy,” Gleick told online magazine Slate.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River by Jayce Hawkins

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Gravel-bed rivers and their floodplains are the lifeblood of ecosystems and need to be allowed to run and flood unimpeded if species are to be protected and communities are to cope with climate change, a ground-breaking scientific study has found.

The broad valleys formed by rivers flowing from glaciated mountains, such as those found throughout B.C. and Alberta, are some of the most ecologically important habitats in North America, according to the team of scientists who have done the first extensive study of the full range of species that rely on gravel-bed rivers, ranging from microbes to bears. The paper was published online Friday in Science Advances.

In the region that stretches from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to the northern Yukon, gravel-bed river flood plains support more than half the plant life. About 70 per cent of the area’s bird species use the floodplain, while deer, elk, caribou, wolves and grizzly bears use the plains for food, habitat and as important migration corridors.

While everyone knows that fish rely on rivers, the scientists found that species such as cottonwood trees need the river flood to reproduce and the ever-changing landscape of changing channels and shifting gravel and rocks supports a complex food web.

Gravel-bed rivers are much more than water flowing through the channel, said lead author Ric Hauer, director of the University of Montana’s Center for Integrated research on the Environment.

“The river flows over and through the entire floodplain system, from valley wall to valley wall, and supports an extraordinary diversity of life. The river is so much bigger than it appears to be at first glance,” he said.

But the floodplains are endangered worldwide as the flat, productive valleys are attractive for agriculture, roads or houses and it is time to look at gravel bed rivers with new eyes, said Harvey Locke, co-founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and one of the study’s authors.

“A wild and free river drives the life support system across the whole landscape and we need to keep them happy,” Locke said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“We need to let them be rivers and run free and do our development respecting that need instead of trying to control them.”

That means not building dams or levees that prevent essential flooding, Locke said.

“Flooding is critical to the health of the riparian system and, by extension, organisms across the whole landscape and, when you put in a dam for climate change mitigation you are killing that process. It’s a catastrophe not only for the immediate ecological effects, but it also puts a huge barrier to connectivity so species cannot go up the river to adapt to climate change,” Locke said.

Hydro dams are often touted as green energy, but, in reality they are a huge problem, not a solution to climate change, he said.

Locke emphasized that the scientific study does not look at the controversy behind individual projects such as the planned Site C dam in northeastern B.C., but said he personally regards Site C as a prime example of the problem.

Existing dams on the Peace River have already had a devastating effect downstream, he said.

“And the horror of wrecking more of that beautiful river valley around Fort St. John is an example of not thinking clearly. It’s very bad for the resilience of the landscape,” he said.

Gravel-bed rivers are found mainly in the western U.S. and Canada — and include major rivers such as the Columbia, Fraser, Flathead, Mackenzie and Yukon — and every part of B.C is affected by them, said Locke, who is hoping the scientific paper will attract the attention of groups such as planners and politicians who make development decisions.

“The really big point is that gravel-bed river systems are the heart of the whole landscape and you don’t want to clog the arteries attached to the heart, which is what a dam does,” he said.

Even in protected areas such as Yellowstone and Banff national parks, humans have altered the floodplains, the scientists found.

Hauer said the increasing pressures of climate change mean that species need access to intact gravel-bed ecosystems in order to survive.

“These systems must be protected and those that are already degraded must be restored,” he said.

Biologist and grizzly bear expert Michael Proctor, of Birchdale Ecological, one of the report’s authors, said the research highlighted how river systems are a focus of regional connectivity, not only for grizzly bears, but for all species.

“This paper helped me realize the amazing significance of gravel bed river systems, not just river valleys, as an ecological focus and arena of so much biodiversity and ecological processes,” Proctor said.

“It’s like the narrow pinch point in an hour-glass of influence. Everything is influenced by that pinch point.”

Human settlement and activities in those river valleys and floodplains reduces their biodiversity and significance, Proctor said.

“We need to leave and even restore some portions of these river systems to more of a natural condition,” he said.

Photo: Flathead River by Harvey Locke

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