Solar-powered curling, anyone? Or what about solar-powered sewage treatment?

Hudson’s Hope, the municipality that would be most affected by the Site C dam, is going solar with a blast.

“It’s starting to look like a real, honest to goodness twenty-first century solar community,” said Don Pettit of the Peace Energy Renewable Energy Cooperative, the business that recently installed 1,580 photovoltaic panels, giving Hudson’s Hope the largest municipal solar array in the province.

The panels — in more than a half-dozen locations, including on the rooftops of the public works shop, municipal building, curling rink, arena, and beside sewage treatment lagoons — will save an estimated $70,000 a year in hydro bills, according to Hudson’s Hope mayor Gwen Johansson.

“Over 30 years, that amounts to savings of more than two million dollars,” Johansson told DeSmog Canada. “If hydro rates go up the savings will be even greater.”

Johansson said Site C had nothing to do with the district’s decision to embrace solar, even though the project’s impacts on Hudson’s Hope will be extensive.

ICYMI: Site C Dam Over Budget, Behind Schedule and Could be Replaced by Alternatives: BCUC Report

“It’s purely a financial decision,” she said. “It’s a pragmatic cost saving.”

Despite conservation efforts such as installing LED lights in the town arena and other district buildings, Johansson said Hudson Hope’s annual hydro bill climbed from $68,000 in 2000 to $172,000 in 2016.

The cost of electricity for buildings with solar panels will be reduced by an average 75 per cent, according to the mayor.

Site C’s Giant Footprint on Hudson’s Hope

Hudson’s Hope, one of the oldest European settlements in the province, overlooks a Peace River canyon more than 60 kilometres upstream from the Site C dam. Known as the gateway to the W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams, as well as to globally significant dinosaur trackways, the district markets itself as the “Playground of the Peace.”

But it might have to find another slogan if B.C.’s NDP government opts to proceed with construction of the now estimated $10 billion Site C dam following an expedited independent review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, whose final report was released Wednesday.

The community of 1,000 people would lose 97 properties to the Site C reservoir and the relocation of a provincial highway for the dam. The reservoir would also engulf the town’s water intake, pumping station and treatment plant, and riverside trails that attract tourists and make the quaint and quiet town an attractive place to live.

All told, 670 hectares of land in the district of Hudson’s Hope would be lost to the relocation of a provincial highway for Site C and its reservoir, which would also flood heritage sites such as an old-time ferry landing and the Rocky Mountain Portage House, a fur trade fort site opposite the town that was established by explorer Simon Fraser.

ICYMI: BC Hydro Spent $20 Million Quietly Buying Land for Site C Before Dam Was Approved

To prevent additional homes and property from sloughing into the reservoir, BC Hydro plans to build a giant berm — up to fourteen metres high, seven metres wide and two and a half kilometres long — as part of what it calls the Hudson’s Hope “shoreline protection” plan.

BC Hydro has stated that the berm would have no visual impact on Hudson’s Hope, but the district disagrees. “The sheer size and scale of the Bern will permanently alter the visual appeal and prized valley views of the District for residents and tourists,” the district noted in its submission to the Joint Review Panel that examined Site C for the B.C. and federal governments.

Johansson said more than 1,000 additional hectares of land in the district would also be lost to a BC Hydro statutory right of way. The right of way leaves ownership of the land in private hands, but prohibits property owners from building permanent structures.

“Although landowners get to keep their land there are severe restrictions on what they can do,” Johansson explained. “It gives BC Hydro the right to inundate, erode, or cause the land to slough or slide or to put debris on it.”

Last year, BC Hydro signed a “Partnering Relationship Agreement” with Hudson’s Hope, awarding the district $1 million in compensation for Site C’s impacts and pledging to support the revitalization of a residential sub-division in the district, where it has already purchased at least 80 properties for Site C.

The District’s Conversion to Solar

Hudson’s Hope’s conversion to solar began with a successful $1.35 million application to the federal gas tax fund, which supports local infrastructure priorities.

Greg Dueck, a solar consultant for the energy coop, said the Peace region has ideal solar conditions despite its northerly location. “Our winters are long but we’ve got good sun…We have great summers with long days.”

The district applied to BC Hydro’s Net Metering program, which allows owners of solar installations to sell excess electricity to BC Hydro and to buy electricity when they need it.

One challenge the Hudson’s Hope project faced was BC Hydro’s cap on the amount of power it will allow from any single solar installation in the district. The cap is 100 kilowatts, and Hudson’s Hope planned to install about 500 kilowatts of capacity, said Dueck. “So we had to spread out the arrays.”

ICYMI: Is B.C.’s Tunnel Vision Forcing out Solar Power?

When the solar installation becomes fully operational by the end of the year, the Bullhead Mountain Curling Club building will produce 100 per cent of its electrical needs, while the district’s arena — often the biggest electricity guzzler for municipalities — will meet just over one-half of its energy demand through solar panels.

Dueck said the falling price of solar, combined with the longevity of the photovoltaic panels, make it an ideal choice for municipalities.

“I think this is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “[Municipalities] are just starting to wake up and say, ‘Wait a minute, we can do this.’ It will reduce their carbon footprint and it will save money every year. Once they put solar on it will pretty much run itself for a very long time. It’s just a really good long-term strategy.”

Elsewhere in the Peace region, Dawson Creek earned the title of “Canada’s First Solar City” in 2012 after it installed solar panels on most of its municipal buildings and embarked on other solar initiatives, such as requiring all new homes to be built “solar ready.”

Fort St. John, seven kilometers downstream from the Site C dam structure, was declared the “Solar Community of the Year” in 2010 after it introduced new policies to encourage solar installations. Among other initiatives, Fort St. John created development permit areas that encourage solar design. It also installed solar powered trash compactors, solar pedestrian signals, solar lighting at bus shelters, and solar hot water and solar air heating in some municipal buildings.

Johansson said the solar panels are a source of community pride and will contribute to long-term economic development. “We are thrilled by the benefits that come with our move to a clean energy future.”

Those benefits included summer jobs for seven Hudson’s Hope high school students, who were hired the coop’s joint venture partner, Moch Electric Ltd., to work on the installation.

The district of Hudson’s Hope, which has expressed concern about the impacts of Site C, has long called for a full independent review of Site C by the BCUC. The Union of B.C. Municipalities, representing the majority of people in the province, also passed a 2015 resolution calling for a BCUC review.

“It didn’t get the full review,” said Johansson, “but at least it’s had an expedited review.”

The B.C. government says it will make a final decision on Site C by the end of the year.

Image: District of Hudson’s Hope solar array via Facebook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Projects like the $7.9-billion Site C dam cannot be built “on the shoulders of communities,” says the mayor of Fort St. John, B.C., a city located just seven kilometres from the proposed hydro dam and its 1,700-man work camps.

Mayor Lori Ackerman told DeSmog Canada her community is holding its breath waiting for the province’s decision on the project.

“It is one of those things where we would just like the decision to be made so we know which way we’re going,” Ackerman said.

The provincial and federal governments are expected to issue a decision on the dam — the third on the Peace River — this fall.

[view:in_this_series=block_1]

In her January presentation to the joint review panel assessing the project, Ackerman was emphatic that  “empowering the province should not disempower Fort St. John.”

“Many we spoke to felt the community would be run over by this project,” she said.  “Our community is at a saturation point for many of the services that our citizens want and need.”

In an interview with DeSmog Canada, Ackerman said residents recognize this dam has been on the books for decades, but “if you’re going to build it, don’t do it on the backs of the taxpayers here.”

Fort St. John is already struggling to manage the growth it has seen due to the fracking boom in B.C.’s natural gas fields — a boom that will only intensify if the province’s much-touted liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plans come to fruition. The city of 20,000 is already stretched for health care services, facing an affordable housing crisis and confronting an increase in drug and gang activity.

With an eight-year construction period and a potential for 1,700 workers living in camps near the city, the Site C dam has been the No. 1 issue for Fort St. John for the last couple of years, Ackerman said.

“It’s seven kilometres from our downtown. In between the downtown and the dam will be a 236-acre area that they will mine for aggregate and a 500-man camp,” Ackerman explained. “So all of this: the traffic, the noise, the dust, having that kind of population sitting on our doorstep, is going to impact our services.”

In her presentation to the joint review panel, Ackerman noted the project will affect the quality of life and cost of living for Fort St. John residents.

“Construction of Site C will be dependent to a large extent on the services and facilities provided by the City of Fort St. John,” she said.

Site C camps would bring 1,700 transient workers

In its report, the joint review panel noted Site C would pose “the usual health and social risks common to boom towns” — risks like the tragic beating death of Christopher Ball in downtown Fort St. John in July 2012.

Councillor Byron Stewart told the panel about that incident (both Ball and his two assailants lived in work camps) while highlighting his community’s concern that the transient workforce from the camps will put considerable strain on the city’s emergency resources and impact the safety of the community. 

While the Site C dam is projected to create about 10,000 person-years of direct employment during its eight-year construction period (or about 1,250 jobs per year), very few of those jobs would go to people in the Fort St. John area.

“The low local unemployment rate would mean that most of the project workers would come from other parts of the province and Canada,” the joint review panel’s report read.

The report also states that “the local economic upside would largely provide the resources to deal with possible problems, including those related to health, education, and housing, especially if the arrangements BC Hydro is willing to make with local authorities can be concluded.”

BC Hydro estimates that Site C would result in a total of $40 million in tax revenues to local governments. But thus far, an arrangement between BC Hydro and the city of Fort St. John hasn't been reached.

“We’re very actively having conversations with the proponent,” Ackerman said. “We want to ensure that we’re at the table with the province and BC Hydro when the decisions are made because we can be very much be a partner in this.”

Ackerman says she wants to ensure that whatever happens “the community is better off as a result of it.” That could mean everything from guarantees that local contractors will be hired to additional funding for policing.

Where will workers come from?

However, those types of promises are little solace to families who stand to lose their homes due to the dam construction. Esther and Poul Pedersen own a 160-acre farm above the proposed dam site and would have to move if the dam is built.

Poul and Esther Pedersen on their land overlooking the Peace River. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

“They’re taking bids for work camps like it’s already been approved,” Poul said. “I’d like to know where they’re going to find the workers. There’s a shortage of workers already. Are they going to be bringing migrant workers over?”

Esther is concerned the projected positive economic impacts for Fort St. John won’t materialize.

“The workers will just fly in and fly out,” she said. “The only places that will be busy are the airports and the bars and the drunk tank.”

Fort St. John businessman Bob Fedderly echoed those concerns in an interview with Common Sense Canadian. 

“Camps aren’t the camps that they used to be,” he said. “It’s all done from outside, so when you start looking at the real spin-offs to the project, if you tear it apart one item at a time, are the spin-offs really there? Or are they cost items, lost opportunities to existing businesses?”

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It’s a sweltering 35 degrees as I pull up to a trailer housing the W.A.C. Bennett Dam visitor centre just outside Hudson’s Hope, 100 kilometres west of Fort St. John.

I’m here to see B.C.’s largest hydro dam first-hand. Damming the Peace River is back in the news this fall as the provincial and federal governments make up their minds about the Site C dam, which would be the third dam on this river.

I’m handed a fluorescent safety vest and am ushered on to a bus along with about 10 others.

Completed in 1967, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam is one of the world's largest earthfill structures, stretching two kilometres across the head of the Peace Canyon and creating B.C.’s largest body of freshwater, the Williston Reservoir. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

Two peppy young women are our guides today. They inform us we’ll be heading more than 150 metres underground into the dam’s powerhouse and manifold.

At the front of our tour bus, pictures of wildlife — grizzlies, lynx, moose, elk — are taped above the driver’s seat. Our guides enthusiastically tell us how 11 of 19 of North America’s big game species live around the dam.

My mind can’t help but wander to a paragraph I read in the joint review panel’s report on the Site C dam, released in May. It appeared on page 307 in a section titled “Panel’s Reflections.”

“A few decades hence, when inflation has worked its eroding way on cost, Site C could appear as a wonderful gift from the ancestors of that future society, just as B.C. consumers today thank the dam-builders of the 1960s. Today’s distant beneficiaries do not remember the Finlay, Parsnip, and pristine Peace Rivers, or the wildlife that once filled the Rocky Mountain Trench. Site C would seem cheap, one day. But the project would be accompanied by significant environmental and social costs, and the costs would not be borne by those who benefit,” the report read.

It’s a poignant moment of pause in a report that doesn’t provide a clear yes or no on whether the 1,100-megawatt dam should be built due to a lack of clear demand for the power, concerns about costs and considerable environmental and social costs.

The panel found risks to fish and wildlife include harmful and irreversible effects on migratory birds and species such as the western toad and short-eared owl. Given the severe effects of dam-building on wildlife, I find the pictures at the front of our tour bus a tad incongruous.

Underground, we’re kitted out with hardhats before entering the powerhouse. It’s as long as three football fields and has the dimensions of the Titanic. This dam can produce up to 2,855 megawatts of power — more than double that of the proposed Site C dam.

Just downstream, another dam — the Peace Canyon dam — produces another 700 megawatts of power. Combined, these two dams provide B.C. with one-third of its power.

Aside from already being home to two megadams, the Peace Country’s landscape is dotted with 16,267 oil and gas well sites and 8,517 petroleum and natural gas facilities, according to a 2013 report, Passages from the Peace, by the David Suzuki Foundation and Global Forest Watch.

“The Peace River region has been and is currently undergoing enormous stress from resource development,” read the joint review panel’s report on Site C.

Rancher Leigh Summer knows that stress firsthand. He was just 14 years old when his family’s ranch was flooded by the W.A.C. Bennett dam. Now Summer has three young children and his life could be disrupted again, this time by the Site C dam that would flood the last intact part of the Peace River. 

“The Peace River in British Columbia has paid her price for prosperity,” Summer says. “Why can’t we leave a piece of the Peace intact for future generations? Let them have a choice. If we flood it, we take that choice away from them, from ever seeing what the Peace River was like.”

If built, the Site C dam would flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries. BC Hydro says the power is needed to meet growing energy demand, but the joint review panel found that the crown corporation hadn’t proven the need for the Site C dam in the immediate future and has not adequately explored alternatives, such as geothermal.

Although BC Hydro has predicted power demand will balloon 40 per cent over the next 20 years, its 2014 financial reports show demand for power has remained relatively static since 2007.

“Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs,” the joint review panel wrote.

The Site C dam “would result in significant cumulative effects on fish, vegetation and ecological communities, wildlife,” they added.

“This is one of the last intact mountain ecosystems on the planet,” says Sarah Cox, senior conservation program manager for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. “Site C will make a major contribution toward severing that Rocky mountain chain that goes all the way from Yellowstone to Yukon.”

The Peace River is the only river to break the barrier of the Rocky Mountains between the Yukon south almost to Mexico.

“The science shows that vulnerable species like grizzly, wolverine and lynx will be greatly impacted to the extent that populations may not be recoverable,” Cox says.

Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has joined forces with Sierra Club BC and the Peace Valley Environment Association to launch StopSiteC.org, dedicated to collecting petition signatures against the dam.

Although this fall is a crucial moment in the battle against Site C, it’s just one of many high-stakes moments in what has been a decades-long battle for residents of the Peace Valley.

“I’ve been living with it for 40 years. My hair went grey the first time around,” jokes Gwen Johansson, mayor of the District of Hudson's Hope. “That shadow has hung over the valley for a very long time.”

Gwen Johansson, a retired school teacher, lives on the banks of the Peace River near Hudson's Hope. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

A flood impact sign on Gwen Johansson's gate shows how high the waters of the Site C reservoir would rise. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

Johansson has lived in her house on the banks of the Peace River since 1975. In 1982, the Site C dam was postponed indefinitely after a review by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

“They said that Hydro had not proven the need for it and, if there was need, they hadn’t proven that this was the best way to get the power,” Johansson says.

“This time they’re going to make sure that nobody gets to examine these questions,” she added, referring to the province's decision to exempt the project from review by the independent regulator (the B.C. Utilities Commission) this time around.

Johansson has been part of a chorus of voices calling on the province to listen to the joint review panel’s recommendation to refer the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission for more in-depth analysis of costs and alternatives.

“It’s almost as though they worry that if they don’t get it done right away they won’t be able to do it,” the retired teacher says.

This week, Johansson was at a press conference in Vancouver trying to get the attention of the media and British Columbians. She brought Peace Valley watermelon, cantaloupe and honey for the crowd.  

One of the biggest obstacles for those in the Peace Valley is that their area — a 14-hour drive from Vancouver — is out of sight, out of mind for the majority of British Columbians. 

“If the decision-makers have to look out the window at the consequences of their decisions, they have to think harder about their decisions,” Johansson says.

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A third hydroelectric dam proposed for the Peace River would flood 83 kilometres of the Peace Valley in between Fort St. John and Hudson's Hope, B.C. Dubbed the "Site C" dam, if built, it would put more than 3,800 hectares of Agricultural Land Reserve farmland — an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria — under water.

DeSmog Canada recently visited the Peace Valley for the ninth annual Paddle for the Peace, which attracted hundreds of paddlers from across North America. While we were there, we met with the farmers and ranchers who stand to be impacted if the dam is built.

Check out our photos below and learn more by reading our in-depth series on the plight of the Peace Valley and the Site C dam.

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I round a bend on Highway 29 just west of Fort St. John and a magnificent river valley opens up before me.

At the bottom of the winding road, farmers' fields stretch as far as the eye can see along the banks of the mighty Peace River.

This is the same valley explorer Alexander Mackenzie paddled through in 1792, noting in his journal that the valley was so rich in wildlife that in some places it looked like a barnyard.

“Ninety per cent of the people who take that drive remember it for a lifetime,” says local rancher Leigh Summer. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

Today, the highway toward Hudson’s Hope is dotted with trucks carrying canoes and kayaks, all converging upon one spot: the Halfway River bridge, where the 9th annual Paddle for the Peace will launch.

The Paddle is an annual pilgrimage for people who want the valley to be protected from BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam, which would flood 83 kilometres of the Peace River and 24 kilometres of its tributaries. The two-hour paddle takes place on a section of the river that will be flooded if the dam is built.

Highway 29 between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope is home to several billboards with slogans like “Keep the Peace,” “Site C Sucks” and “Save the Peace Valley.”

With the federal and provincial governments expected to make their decisions on the project this fall, there’s an undercurrent of tension at this year’s Paddle as farmers, ranchers and First Nations wait to see what will be next in their decades-long fight to stop the dam (the project was first rejected in 1982).

The people of this area know a thing or two about dams given that the Peace River is already home to two major ones.

Leigh Summer was just 14 years old when his family’s ranch was flooded by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in 1967. His grandparents homesteaded that land in the 1920s and his mother was born there.

“We were told it was going to be good for the economy, so we took it in stride,” Summer says while sitting in his boat with his family during Saturday's Paddle for the Peace.

The W.A.C. Bennett dam stretches two kilometres across the head of the Peace canyon and creates Williston Reservoir, B.C.’s largest body of freshwater.

“I think the Williston Lake has paid dividends to the province,” Summer says. “But I think the time has come to realize that it’s a decent energy, but it’s a thing of the past.”

Now, 47 years after being flooded out for the first time, Summer's ranch is at risk again — this time from BC Hydro’s proposed third dam on the Peace, dubbed “Site C.”

With a price tag of $7.9 billion, the Site C dam is the largest infrastructure project in Canada and would produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. But the demand for the power has been questioned by economists and by the joint review panel that reviewed the project.

The panel's report, released in May, was inconclusive, saying both that the dam could provide cheap, reliable power for B.C. and that the demand for that power is not clear. The panel asked the provincial government to refer the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission to analyze the costs — something the province has yet to do.

“Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs,” the report says.

If the dam is built, Summer would be one of dozens of families who will impacted by flooding, slope instability and road re-alignments. His family could end up with a road through the field in front of their house. He finds it galling how BC Hydro talks about this being the Crown corporation's last chance to build a big dam.

“Why is this the last if this is such a good thing? They are admitting that hydro electricity was good in the 19th and in the 20th century. We’re in the 21st century … we have to either look to conservation or other forms of energy,” he says. “It’s so archaic. Building this dam isn’t even progress for the province.”

Leigh, his wife Darcy and their three young children spend most of the summer enjoying the Peace River. Their youngest son, a fifth generation Peace Country boy, is even called River.

Leigh Summer's family ranch was flooded by the W.A.C. Bennett dam in 1967.

River Summer spends a lot of time on the Peace River with his parents and two older sisters.

“I’m just sad at what they lost already with the two valleys,” Darcy says. “When you see pictures and when you do research on that, it was just beautiful, it was so magnificent. To think that we’re going to keep destroying it.”

This stretch of the Peace valley between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope is the last intact part of the river in British Columbia.

“Why can’t we leave a piece of the Peace intact for future generations?” Leigh says, his daughter sitting in his lap. “Let them have a choice. If we flood it, we take that choice away from them, from ever seeing what the Peace River was like.”

Out of sight, out of mind for the voting majority

For those trying to stop the Site C dam, one of the biggest challenges is that this part of the province — a 14-hour drive from Vancouver — is out of sight, out of mind for the voting majority of the province.

A September 2013 poll commissioned by BC Hydro found only four in 10 British Columbians had even heard of the Crown utility’s proposal to build a third hydroelectric dam on the Peace River.

“That’s what this event is all about,” says Roland Willson, chief of West Moberly First Nation. “There are people who are making a decision about this valley who have never even been here.”

Roland Willson, chief of West Moberly First Nation.

“There is nothing better in the world than to be able to put your boat on the water or go stand knee deep in the water and catch a fish and eat that fish. And drink the water. That in itself is something that’s worth saving,” Willson says.

Because the Peace River is the only river to break the barrier of the Rocky Mountains between the Yukon south almost to Mexico, it has provided a gateway for wildlife and people for thousands of years.

Although few British Columbians make it up to the Peace region nowadays, Fort St. John is the oldest non-native community in British Columbia, established as a fur trading post in 1794 — and First Nations have been here more than 10,000 years. Indeed, the Peace got its name from a peace treaty signed between the Danezaa people, called the Beaver by the Europeans, and the Cree signed in 1781.

As I float down the river in one of about 250 boats taking part in the Paddle, First Nations drummers start to sing alongside. At just that moment, an eagle swoops overhead.

About 250 boats were on the water for Paddle for the Peace on Saturday July 12.

“We’re prepared to take any means necessary to stop this project in support of the Treaty 8 First Nations leadership,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told Desmog Canada at the Paddle. “I really hope that this project is buried once and for all.”

People aren’t the only ones who will be impacted if the dam is built.

“Site C will make a major contribution toward severing that Rocky mountain chain that goes all the way from Yellowstone to Yukon,” says Sarah Cox, senior conservation program manager for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.  

“The science shows that vulnerable species like grizzly, wolverine and lynx will be greatly impacted to the extent that populations may not be recoverable,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine that the beauty of this valley will be completely flooded and underwater.”

Last week, the Sierra Club BC, Peace Valley Environmental Association and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative launched a new website, StopSiteC.org, where citizens can sign a petition to voice their opposition to the project.

'The Peace … has paid her price'

Doug Donaldson, the NDP’s aboriginal affairs and reconciliation critic, spoke to the crowd of paddlers before they hit the water.

“I think that this river and the Peace River Valley and you have given enough to the province,” he said.

A billboard protests the Site C dam above Bear Flats in the Peace Valley.

Organizers said BC Liberal representatives were invited to speak, but did not attend. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett has said he has not made up his mind about the dam yet.

For Leigh, who’s watching and waiting to see whether his family may be uprooted a second time by one of BC Hydro’s dams, the Peace has shouldered more than its fair share of the impacts of providing power for the province.

“The Peace River in British Columbia has paid her price for prosperity,” Summer says. “Do we have to completely destroy the whole Peace River in all of B.C.?”

He’s frustrated that the province has exempted the project from the review of the B.C. Utilities Commission, the independent regulator that turned the dam down in 1982.

“That’s wrong. We call ourselves a democracy; that’s not democracy,” Summer says.

“The truth would set us free here, but the truth never gets to the right people.”

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With a provincial decision on the Site C dam expected in September, the District of Hudson’s Hope is calling on B.C. Premier Christy Clark to refer the Site C dam project for review by the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC).

“Before spending $7.9 billion of taxpayers money on the proposed Site C dam and increasing the already enormous $62 billion provincial debt, the provincial government needs to do its homework to see if there are less costly alternatives," said Hudson's Hope Mayor Gwen Johansson.

Hudson’s Hope request echoes the findings of the joint review panel’s 457-page report on the Site C dam, which recommended that the B.C. Utilities Commission review Site C’s costs, develop a long-term pricing scenario, review BC Hydro’s load forecasts and demand-side management plans.

“We feel we haven’t had a full arms length, independent review,” Johansson told DeSmog Canada.  “We need to look at the cost, at the demand and at the impact of these emerging technologies.”

The Liberal government previously exempted Site C from the oversight of the B.C. Utilities Commission, which has rejected the project previously. When the joint review panel recommendations came out, Energy Minister Bill Bennett immediately threw cold water on the idea of the project being reviewed by the independent regulator.

“This project has been poked, prodded and analyzed for the last 35 years,” he said at the time. “I think subjecting it to another review after all the years it has been studied, is not a good use of public money.”

A spokesman for Energy Minister Bill Bennett declined a request for comment on Wednesday.

Hudson’s Hope, a community of 1,100 people in the heart of the Peace River Valley, would be impacted more than any other municipality if a third dam is built on the Peace River. About 600 hectares of land in the district would be flooded and another 1,400 would land inside BC Hydro’s “impact lines,” putting the land off limits for permanent structures. Hudson’s Hope is already home to the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and the Peace Canyon dam. (Map of current and proposed dams)

“It’s such a beautiful valley,” Johansson said. “One of the best things about living in Hudson Hope is to drive through the valley from Fort St. John to Hudson Hope and that would be lost.”

Johansson was in Vancouver yesterday to release a report by Urban Systems, commissioned by Hudson’s Hope, reviewing the findings of the joint review panel report.

 “Critical questions about the proposed Site C project and viable alternatives remain unanswered," the report finds. It continues:

“The evidence suggests that a commitment to this $7.9 billion public investment would be premature before the BCUC undertakes a review of the proposed Site C project costs and long-term energy pricing and re-investigates the comparative costs and benefits of potential alternatives.” With BC Hydro stating that it has generation capacity to meet demand until 2028, Johansson says more time should be taken to consider alternatives.

“Some options have the potential to save B.C. taxpayers billions of dollars while at the same time avoiding the negative impacts of Site C,” Johansson said.

DeSmog Canada’s series on the proposed Site C dam has explored alternatives to the dam — including how the province of B.C. has failed for three decades to follow up on advice to research geothermal options.

"There is no crisis.  Let's adopt the recommendations of the Joint Review Panel and allow the BCUC to do the job it was set up to do,” Johansson said.

Johansson and other Peace Country residents will gather this weekend for the annual Paddle for the Peace.

Photo: Peace Valley near Hudson's Hope by Susan Hubbard via Flickr

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.