When a public regulator repeatedly makes major decisions that favour corporate interests — quietly and behind closed doors — we have a problem.

British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office bills itself as a “neutral” provincial agency.

But there is evidence that this is not the case, and that B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman needs to make serious reforms — beyond what was recently announced in his revitalization of the province’s environmental assessment law.

On numerous occasions under B.C.’s environmental assessment regime, corporations close to the government have received favourable rulings from the regulator.

Citizens may conclude that the Environmental Assessment Office is captured by the very companies it regulates — companies that have, in some cases, made handsome political donations to British Columbia’s two major political parties.

Consider, for example, Encana Corporation, a significant player in the natural gas industry in B.C.’s South Peace region.

In one ruling after another between 2014 and 2015, Encana received a free pass from the Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) without the public hearing a word about it until after the fact.

Those rulings involved not one, not two, but three gas plants that Encana proposed to build near the community of Dawson Creek. One of them was the largest of its kind built in Western Canada in the past 30 years.

To be clear, none of these were minor facilities.

They all qualified as “major” projects under the Environmental Assessment Act’s regulations, and therefore should have been “reviewable.”

The Encana north central liquids hub used to support compressor stations, gas plants and pipelines for LNG development in the Farmington area of B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

In each case, Encana asked the Environmental Assessment Office to exempt the gas plants from lengthy environmental assessments that would have required public notification and consultation.

And in each case, the office granted the company’s request without first notifying the public.

The company was thus spared the expense of having its projects subject to more transparent public environmental screenings.

All three plants are now built, owned and operated by Veresen Midstream LP, under an arrangement in which the company agrees to compress and transport all the hydrocarbons that Encana drills and fracks in the region over the next 30 years.

Encana’s requests to the Environmental Assessment Office were entirely above-board according to the law.

This is a problem for people concerned with a lack of transparency and public input into major projects.

The Environmental Assessment Act grants the office powers to exempt reviewable projects from assessments. When and how such calls are made, however, is often completely shielded from public scrutiny until after the fact.

That’s what happened in the three Encana cases. And that is precisely what Environment Minister Heyman should fix if his revitalization efforts are to have a lasting, positive impact.

First Nation leaders and prominent environmental lawyers all recently told Heyman and/or key officials in his ministry that the assessment office’s powers to exempt major projects should be scrapped.

Members of the public echoed those concerns. There is simply no legitimate reason to give the office such extraordinary powers.

Yet B.C.’s recent reforms to the Environmental Assessment Act would maintain the exemption power, with only one change — that the office recommend an exemption and the Minister then make the decision.

Leaving so much power in the Environmental Assessment Office opens the system to abuse and raises questions.

Questions like: Did Encana’s generous donations to B.C.’s major political parties have any bearing on the back-to-back-to-back favourable rulings that the company secured?

According to the searchable Elections B.C. database, donations by Encana to BC’s Liberal and New Democratic parties combined were more than $1.32 million from 2005 to the present, with the overwhelming majority of those funds (more than 92 per cent) going to the Liberals.

Elections B.C. also reports that former Encana chairman and CEO Gwyn Morgan, a one-time advisor to former B.C. Premier Christy Clark, personally donated more than $263,000 to the BC Liberals.

(Early in its mandate, the present NDP government banned corporate and union donations. But there are myriad ways that such entities continue to wield influence.)

As Encana’s donations flowed, the government launched the Site C project, and BC Hydro began spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build new transmission lines from its two existing hydro dams on the Peace River. As those new lines were built, it was expected that the fossil fuel industry would consume much of that power.

Documents posted by the Environmental Assessment Office after it granted Encana exemptions at its Sunrise, Saturn and Tower gas plants show that the regulator gave the company what it wanted partly because the plants would be powered by hydroelectricity, and not natural gas. According to the office, that meant that the plants would have few “significant” environmental impacts.

But full environmental assessments would have allowed members of the public to question such assertions. For starters, what about all the increased natural gas drilling and fracking to supply gas to the three plants?

A public environmental assessment might also have allowed members of the public to raise questions about the “cumulative” impact of the full range of gas industry activities on the region’s fragile waterways, First Nations and farming communities — something that environmental assessments often neglect.

Recently I got a firsthand view of what that impact looks like when I toured the Farmington area, south of the Peace and Kiskatinaw rivers. In field after field, I arrived to see 20 acres or more of farmland stripped of its topsoil to make way for giant, multi-well gas pads.

I stood beside massive earthen dams that had essentially turned quarter sections of farmland into giant industrial water farms — where hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of freshwater are staged for use in brute-force gas industry fracking operations.

And I watched as huge swaths of wheat fields were turned into new natural gas and toxic wastewater pipeline routes, that linked the mushrooming industrial infrastructure together.

All of these developments underscored the growing fragility of B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve in a region where the assault on farmland is starkly evident at the nearby, massively over-budget Site C hydroelectric dam that would destroy thousands of acres of the province’s most productive farmland.

None of this apparently constituted anything “significant” as far as the EAO was concerned.

If you want evidence that B.C.’s environmental assessment legislation is in serious need of an overhaul, look no further.

There’s still time to put a full stop to the Environmental Assessment Office’s discretionary powers to exempt major industrial projects from environmental assessments and to restore the public’s rightful place in the process.

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 provincial stop work order on the only two buildings under construction on the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort site comes as no surprise to those familiar with the Jumbo Valley, which is marked by the bare swaths of avalanche paths sweeping down mountainsides and across the valley.

“I think it was a foregone conclusion,” said Rod Gibbons, senior guide with RK Heli-ski, a company that has operated in the area for more than 40 years.

“We were the ones that turned in the report to government to let them know (Glacier Resorts Ltd.) had just put the footings in the runoff zone for an avalanche path,” he said.

Renowned mountaineer and photographer Pat Morrow, who, as a director of the Jumbo Creek Conservation Society, has been at the forefront of an ongoing battle to stop development of the glacial wilderness resort, said the proponent appears to be arguing that avalanches don’t go through trees or create new paths.

“This was not a surprise at all,” he said.

In a letter sent last week to Oberto Oberti of Glacier Resorts, Autumn Cousins, compliance manager for the Environmental Assessment Office, said the company must stop construction on the day lodge and service building, at least until new avalanche safety conditions are met.

A report by Dynamic Avalanche Consulting found that the service building is constructed in a high-risk red zone, where construction of new buildings is normally not permitted, and the day lodge is in the moderate-risk blue zone, where structures must be reinforced, explosive avalanche controls used and a detailed evacuation plan in place.

The controversial proposal for a billion-dollar, 6,300-bed resort, on Crown land 55-kilometres west of Invermere, has been in the works for 24 years. It was granted an Environmental Assessment Certificate in 2004, which was renewed in 2009, but, for the certificate to become permanent, the company must prove that construction substantially started before last fall’s deadline.

For the last decade, progress on the resort has been almost non-existent, but, shortly before the deadline, foundations were poured for the two buildings and preliminary work started on the ski lift site.

Foundation for the Jumbo Glacier Resort day lodge. Photo: Jumbo Glacier Resort via Facebook

However, locating the buildings in avalanche zones means the company is not in compliance with one of the Environmental Assessment Certificate conditions.

If the province gives the go-ahead, the certificate will have to be amended, even if mitigation measures are in place, Cousins said in the letter.

“It is the (Environmental Assessment Office’s) view that it is not possible for Glacier Resorts Ltd. to achieve compliance with condition 36 with the two structures as currently located,” she wrote.

The compliance investigation is separate from the process to determine whether the project has substantially started, Cousins said in the letter.

Morrow believes the avalanche report should convince Environment Minister Mary Polak to put a final halt to the resort plans.

“If she tries to cancel the independent avalanche consulting firm’s findings, it would be going too far,” he said.

If the foundations of the two buildings are removed from the equation, a new bridge would be the only new construction — and that was paid for by the Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality, meaning it was funded by provincial taxpayers, Gibbons said.

Bridge construction. Photo: Jumbo Glacier Resort via Facebook

“I am now waiting with bated breath to hear what government is going to do about that substantial start,” he said.

John Bergenske, conservation director for Wildsight, an environmental group that opposes the project, said Jumbo is a test for the provincial government and its willingness to adhere to its own regulations.

“I certainly can’t imagine what rationale there would be to say that the project has substantially started,” he said.

The proponents have failed to meet the conditions of the Environmental Assessment Certificate and have not proved that they have any major investors, Bergenske said.

“This would be handing a permit to people who have absolutely failed to come through on anything they have promised…This business has been given every conceivable break — is the province going to change the rules every time someone wants to do something different?” he asked.

“If, in fact, there are any rules, there’s only one decision that the minister can make.”

The original resort plans show the day lodge was to be built in another part of the valley outside avalanche zones.

“They changed their minds for some reason at the last minute,” Morrow said.

“It’s mystifying — who knows what they were thinking.”

Gibbons is also nonplussed by the decision to move the lodge.

“I suspect it was for economic purposes. Maybe it was quicker and easier to put it there,” he said.

Lift towers are at even more risk from avalanches than the two buildings, said Morrow, who is hoping the province is looking at the whole picture.

“It’s almost impossible to put them any place that is completely safe,” he said.

“Even the wind from an avalanche can knock a gondola right off the cable. The winds can cut trees in half.”

DeSmog Canada was unable to contact Glacier Resorts Monday, but in a written response to the Environmental Assessment Office, the company said mitigation efforts for the day lodge will include structural reinforcement, comprehensive avalanche control and an evacuation plan for employees and the general public.

“The service building will be converted to a structurally reinforced storage building that will not be accessed during winter,” said the company response.

Image Credit: Jumbo Glacier Resort via Facebook

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