The electricity created by the controversial Site C dam — long touted for producing enough electricity for 450,000 homes — could end up powering natural gas fracking operations in northeast B.C.

The Prince George Citizen reported on Wednesday that for the first time BC Hydro is considering Site C as a power source for its proposed Peace Region Electrical Supply project, a major transmission line project in northeast B.C.

If the Site C dam gets built (it’s currently facing several legal challenges) and BC Hydro moves forward with the proposed route for the transmission line, natural gas drillers between Dawson Creek and Chetwynd could plug directly into the grid.

The Citizen reports that Hydro expects the transmission project won’t be in service until 2022, making Site C — set for completion in 2025 — a viable option.

The subject of what Site C’s power is required for has spurred intense debate. Some have argued that the dam is needed to power B.C.’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. However, a DeSmog Canada investigation last year indicated that was unlikely to be the case due to timing and transmission constraints.

This week’s news, however, indicates Site C’s power could be used to produce the gas the province plans to export via LNG plants.

"It’d always been in the back of the mind that Site C was possible, but until it got approved it wasn't something we were looking into in a great amount of detail," BC Hydro spokesperson Lesley Wood told the Prince George Citizen.

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, the Site C dam is the most expensive public project in B.C. history. Because it's being proposed by a crown corporation, the costs will ultimately be borne by taxpayers and BC Hydro customers. If built, the dam will flood an 83-kilometre stretch of the fertile Peace Valley.

Work has already started to upgrade power lines in the Groundbirch area east of Dawson Creek, where the province has been experiencing the "most dramatic single-industry driven regional load growth BC Hydro has ever seen," Wood told the Citizen.

The natural gas is located in the Montney Play region, which contains unconventional tight gas and shale gas. The gas is accessed through a process called hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — which involves blasting a mixture of water and chemicals underground to fracture the rock formation and release the gas.

A fracking study released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found fracking puts drinking water supplies at risk of contamination. Further, exporting LNG will not help combat climate change, according to a report from the Pembina Institute last year. A report in Nature last year also found cheap abundant natural gas will delay efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Site C is facing growing opposition, despite BC Hydro hoping to start construction in July.

In May, a U.S. energy economist said the power from the dam is dramatically more costly than previously thought.

Earlier this year, the chair of the joint review panel that reviewed the Site C dam told DeSmog Canada that the province should have waited on making a decision to go ahead with the project. Chair Harry Swain also called the province’s failure to investigate alternatives a “dereliction of duty.”

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Although city officials from Dawson’s Creek won’t disclose the names of the companies involved, they are confirming that fracking waste has been illegally dumped into the city’s water treatment system on at least two occasions.

Jim Chute, administrative officer for the city, told DeSmog Canada, that illegal dumping has occurred at least three times, but twice the waste was “clearly” related to fracking.

“It has actually been on three occasions in the last 18 months where we’ve caught inappropriate materials being dumped,” he said. “One of those was a load of contaminated diesel. It’s not clear to us exactly how that diesel got contaminated so we don’t know if that was frack-related or not.”

“The other two were a mix of compounds that were clearly flowback waste from a frack operation.”

Chute said the chemicals used in the fracking process can damage the city’s water and sewage treatment facilities which are unable to handle industrial waste. Chute told the Alaska Highway News the waste could cause irreversible damage to living organisms that play a crucial role in the city’s water reclamation system.

Fracking in northeastern B.C.

Fracking, otherwise known as high-volume slickwater hydraulic fracturing, is a controversial extraction process used to free oil and gas from tight rock formations using extremely high pressures and large amounts of toxic chemicals.

The incidents in Dawson Creek involved subcontractors of the gas companies, Chute told DeSmog Canada, saying “virtually all jobs are outsourced to subtrades.”

“If you’re Encana Corporation, you probably don’t drill that well yourself, it’s probably contracted out to a subcontractor like Precision Drilling. And then Precision Drilling themselves don’t build the lease roads, they contract that out to a subcontractor…and they don’t do their own waste disposal, they contract that out.”

“It’s so busy up here,” Chute said.

“The situations we’ve encountered in every case has been an independent contractor to a company who signs on to a company [saying] they will dispose of the waste in an appropriate manner…and then behave badly, try to save themselves some money by coming to our dump instead of going to the proper spot.”

Chute told the Alaska Highway News the contractors were fined and responsible for cleaning the contaminated holding tanks.

Toxic wastewater a problem for industry

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, the provincial oil and gas regulator, is responsible for monitoring the activity of fracking companies, including the disposal of wastewater. B.C. has several private wastewater facilities where recyclable water is separated from toxic waste, which is then disposed of in underground injection wells.

In an emailed statement, B.C. Oil and Gas Commission communications coordinator Hardy Friedrich said, “B.C. has strict regulations related to the disposal of oil and gas waste in the Oil and Gas Waste Regulation and the Hazardous Waste Regulation.”

He added: “Fluids used in hydraulic fracturing must be disposed in a deep underground formation via a service well. Most other waste must be disposed at an approved disposal facility. There are currently 106 operating deep well disposal sites in northeast B.C.”

The difficulty of disposing of wastewater from fracking operations is a problem that has plagued the industry across North America. Flowback fluid from a fracking well includes toxic chemicals and oftentimes radioactive elements from extremely deep wells.

Most municipal wastewater systems are not equipped with the technology to handle such toxic waste in such high volumes.

Dawson Creek, located in the shale gas-rich Montney Basin, has seen a major increase in gas companies in recent years. The Montney Basin, along with the Horn River Basin also in northeastern B.C., could potentially account for 22 per cent of all North American shale gas production by 2020 according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In the early years of B.C.'s shale gas boom, Grant Shomody, president of Grantech Engineering International, warned of the potential problems producers would face when it comes to wastewater disposal in the Montney:

“If this play develops as producers hope, the number of wells being drilled would severely tax local water resources. In that case, we can expect a lot of ecologically related criticism. There’s also the problem of disposing of the frac water or treating it for reuse. It’s expensive, and Montney producers have not installed water treatment capabilities at their plants.”

A challenge and liability for Dawson Creek

Chute expressed concern with illegal dumping of fracking wastewater, especially in light of new Environment Canada rules, which could hold city officials accountable for negligence.

“Previously there had been less onerous regulations, around how anyone who is a sewage treatment operator or handler of sewage…in order to prevent unauthorized discharge into watercourses,” Chute explained.

These new federal regulations are more strenuous and more robust than any that had been in place in the past, Chute said.

“The onus was put on us to ensure we had the safeguards in place that nothing escaped into the environment. Part and parcel because of that, and [how] thinking changed around Enron and evidence of bad corporate behaviour, part of the regulations imposed personal liability on the people responsible.”

“In Dawson Creek, that would be me,” he said.

Dawson Creek is moving to a new system, said Chute, where a failsafe dump station will monitor regularly for harmful compounds. If those compounds are found, the waste will be prevented from entering the regular treatment system.

Chute says the new facility, which will cost nearly $4 million to build, will be continuously monitored during open hours, 12 hours a day, six days a week.

“All of this is to make sure unauthorized industrial waste doesn’t go into our system.”

“We are going to make sure that we catch anybody that tries to circumvent the system by coming to us because we’re a shorter haul than they’d have to go to the proper spot.”

Image Credit: Fracking water storage near Hudson's Hope in B.C. Image from the CCPA report: Fracking Up B.C.

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When you think about what Canada is known for on the international stage these days, fighting climate change is not exactly near the top of the list. Without credible plans from Ottawa and many provincial capitals, Canada’s climate-fighting reputation is up in smoke or, as the Economist put it, the moose has lost its sunglasses and Canada is “uncool.”

But when you look beyond the headlines, there is another story — one in which the vast majority of Canadian communities are committed to fighting climate change.

DeSmog Canada reached out to experts across Canada to get their opinions on which municipalities are leading the fight against climate change. Immediately, it became clear we could easily list Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton or Vancouver and tell great stories about these innovative cities.

Vancouver, for instance, nominated most often by the experts, is reforming its bylaws, permits, regulations and policies in an effort to become the greenest city in the world by 2020. Whether it is energy, food, grants, efficiency, jobs, bikes, procurement or construction, Vancouver has a sustainability policy, subsidy or project. Add in the work Surrey, Burnaby and the City of North Vancouver are doing to evolve from Vancouver bedroom communities into sustainable urban environments and the story could start and end in the Lower Mainland.

But we wanted to look beyond the big players to find the other guys — the innovative communities you probably haven’t heard about yet. Drum roll please …

Dawson Creek, B.C.

Dawson Creek, at "Mile 0" on the Alaska Highway, sits in the middle of B.C.'s natural gas fields. Photo: Shawn via Flickr.

Way up in the Peace Country, 400 kilometres northeast of Prince George, lays Dawson Creek — a city of fewer than 12,000 people in the heart of British Columbia’s natural gas fields.

During the last decade, the town has installed solar hot-water heaters on municipal buildings, changed its building-code bylaws to require every new house to be built “solar ready,” started charging a $100-per-tonne levy on greenhouse gas emissions and channeled the cash into a carbon fund, developed an anti-idling campaign, embraced a nearby wind farm and in 2012 became Canada’s first Solar City.

During this sustainability boom, the region also saw a massive influx of development from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of natural gas wells. Fracking requires large amounts of water, combined with chemicals, used to blast the natural gas from the shale rock formations. Faced with repeat drought years, Dawson Creek partnered with Shell to build a water-reclamation plant to provide water to industry and preserve the town’s drinking water.

"Now we have about 4,000 cubic metres of water a day going through this effluent plant that can be used for fracking instead of surface water or the city's treated water," former mayor Mike Bernier told Postmedia.

Guelph, Ontario

A footbridge in Riverside Park, Guelph. Photo: Patty O'Hearn Kickham via Flickr.

Guelph, Ont., located 90 kilometres west of Toronto, was the winner of the 2014 Sustainable Communities Award for Energy from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. The city, population 120,000, has leveraged Ontario’s green energy policies to develop close to 1,000 solar installations and has cut emissions by capturing methane from the landfill and composting organics.

Since 2006, Guelph has cut emissions per capita by 17 per cent. (The city was also helped by Ontario’s policy of phasing out coal-fired power plants). Guelph is aiming to have two district-energy systems operational by this year or next to provide hot or cool water from a central plant to customers, reducing emissions even more.

“By 2031 we’re expecting to add approximately 50 per cent more in population and a per capita reduction of 60 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions,” says mayor Karen Farbridge.

Varennes, Quebec     

The Saint-Joachim Chapel was built in 1832 in Varennes, Quebec. Now the city is leading the way to the low-carbon future with several technology research centres calling Varennes home. Photo: Gilles Douaire via Flickr.

Varennes, Que., located about 25 kilometres from Montreal, is home to a number of technology research centres, including Hydro-Québec’s IREQ, CanmetENERGY and the National Institute for Scientific Research. It is also the home office of the biggest biofuel producer in Canada, Greenfield Ethanol.

Greenfield is building an ethanol plant in Varennes using non-recyclable, non-compostable waste and an anaerobic digester, using organic waste from the surrounding area to produce biogas. 

The City of Varennes is replacing its city lights with energy efficient LEDs, using electric cars (with seven charging stations in the city) and building a new net-zero library — the first in net-zero building in Canada.

“Its yearly energy consumption will be zero thanks to geothermal technology, 700 solar panels, radiating floors, solar walls and smart lighting,” says mayor Martin Damphouse.

T’Sou-ke First Nation, B.C.

T'Sou-ke Chief Gordon Planes amongst a sea of solar panels. Photo: David Dodge, Green Energy Futures

About 40 kilometres west of Victoria on Vancouver Island is the T’Sou-ke First Nation. It is a tiny community of 250 members (150 on reserve), but it has a claim to fame as British Columbia’s “most solar-powered community.”

In 2009, through B.C.’s Solar Community Program, the T’Sou-ke Nation installed 75 kilowatts of solar power and now sells excess power back to the grid. All homes on the reserve have solar hot-water systems and have had energy-efficiency retrofits. The community also built a greenhouse and runs a community garden, selling extra produce to roughly 30 stores on southern Vancouver Island.

“When you think about the T’Sou-ke Nation, this tiny group on the edge of Vancouver Island, developing probably the most solar-intensive community in Canada, it is quite an achievement,” says Andrew More, T’Sou-ke solar program manager.

Most recently, the T’Sou-ke Nation became a partner in a $750-million wind-power project that will produce enough energy to power 30,000 homes.

Bridgewater, Nova Scotia   

Bridgewater Farmers' Market. Photo: John McCarthy via Flickr.

Bridgewater, located about 100 kilometers down the south shore of Nova Scotia from Halifax, has transformed its community’s energy system. Bolstered by provincial policies, the town of more than 8,000, has replaced street lights with LED lights, conducted energy efficiency retrofits to municipal buildings, introduced an anti-idling program, changed land-use policies and started buying locally installed solar power.

As a result of the major overhaul, Bridgewater reduced energy consumption from its town’s facilitates in 2012 by 15 per cent from 2007 levels and exceeded its goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent.

“I take particular pride in knowing that our town has done an exemplary job in dealing with sustainability planning,” says Mayor Carroll Publicover.

Main Photo: Dawson Creek grain elevator. Credit: Shannon via Flickr.

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