Some discomforts of the Yukon winter don’t last long — a car that just won’t start, a parka that’s frozen stiff. Others, however, carry over to following years.

The 2018-19 winter in Yukon was dry and frigid. Snowpack hit a near-historic low as a result, leading to low water levels in the reservoirs that drive the territory’s hydro electricity plants. 

Because the territory’s grid is heavily reliant on hydro, Yukon Energy has been forced to use more diesel fuel this year. 

Now, with climate change expected to make weather patterns even more volatile, the utility said it’s making moves to diversify the grid.

Yukon looks to up diversity and efficiency in energy

According to a Yukon Energy fact sheet, the Whitehorse reservoir had just 51 per cent of its normal snowpack levels in 2019. 

The Mayo and Aishihik reservoirs fared much worse, with 31 per cent and 21 per cent of normal snowpack levels, respectively.

“The last time we had numbers like that was in the late ’90s,” said Andrew Hall, president and CEO of Yukon Energy. He added natural gas has been burning steadily since November to make up the difference. 

And when an LNG generator broke down earlier this month, more diesel ended up being used to compensate for that lost capacity.

Snowpack levels influence the amount of running water available for hydro plants the following year. Source: Yukon Government. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Because of the lower water levels in the reservoirs, Yukon Energy estimates roughly 16.5 gigawatts of energy will need to be generated using fossil fuels in April and early May.

“That’s around the same amount of electricity 16,500 Yukon homes would use in a month,” the utility’s fact sheet states, “or about three per cent of the total amount of power we will likely need to generate this year.”

The sheet also notes 72 per cent of that power is being generated by natural gas, while diesel powers the rest.

 Hall said climate change could actually mean more warm weather with higher levels of precipitation in the territory. But the problem is rainfall is hyperlocal, meaning Whitehorse may get a lot, while Carmacks, a roughly two-hour drive north, gets a fraction of it.

“It’s a variable we don’t have a good handle on,” he said.

The trick is to diversify the grid and look for efficiencies, according to Hall. And there’s a suite of things Yukon Energy is working on, in the near and long term, to do both.

Residents to make money generating wind, solar power

Hall said an easy win when it comes to efficiency would be to update the Whitehorse dam’s turbine, which dates back to the 1950s.

But beyond that, Yukon is working to expand a program that enables residents to make money by generating wind, solar and biomass electricity and feeding it into the grid. 

Hall said the Yukon government is in the process of doubling how much the cottage industry can produce by providing financial and technical support to First Nations and municipalities.

The territory will also introduce legislation to regulate geothermal development. 

Yukon can also sync its grid with Atlin, B.C., where the Taku River Tlingit First Nation hopes to expand its hydroelectricity operations. The nation could provide the territory with upward of eight megawatts of power, Hall said. He added the project could be ready in roughly three years.

Better research to anticipate the weather

Since 2012, researchers at Yukon College, the Université du Québec and the University of Alberta have worked together with Yukon Energy to better predict water levels. 

The hope is the research will help the utility better prepare for unanticipated weather patterns. 

Brian Horton, manager of climate change research at Yukon College’s research centre, said there are five automated weather stations equipped with sensors that measure the depth and volume of the water in the snowpack at the headwaters of Yukon rivers. 

The stations also use precipitation gauges to determine the levels of snow and rainfall. 

The collected data, made available to Yukon Energy by satellite, can help determine seasonal forecasts and provide multi-decade projections, Horton said.

 If Yukon Energy knows how much water is flowing, “they can make decisions on how they can operate the generating facilities within the envelope that they’re given,” he said. “This gives them more heads up, more planning capacity for knowing what’s available, what’s in the bank account, basically.”

But all this work comes with a caveat.

“You’re going to have, from time to time, these … drought years,” Hall said. 

Developing a system that is 100 per cent renewable, even under drought conditions, is “just not realistic” for the territory, he added. 

“There could be years in the future where we have similar situations where you have to run diesel just to keep the lights on.”

If anything is predictable, it’s that weather patterns will become less predictable with climate change. 

Hall agrees, calling efforts to predict the weather a “crapshoot.” Case in point? The snowpack levels from the 2020 winter season that left the Whitehorse reservoir at 110 per cent. 

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Hydropower is usually touted as clean energy, but a new study has found man-made reservoirs are producing far more greenhouse gases than previously believed, with most of those emissions in the form of methane, a potent climate-warming gas.

Researchers found that reservoirs are producing 1.3 per cent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans, or, to put the figure in context, more than all greenhouse gases produced in Canada annually.

“We weren’t super-surprised at the magnitude of the emissions, but one thing we were surprised to see is the per area rate of methane emissions. They are 25 per cent higher than previously thought,” Washington State University researcher Bridget Deemer, lead author of the study, published Wednesday in the journal BioScience, told DeSmog Canada.

“(Methane emissions) contribute about 80 per cent of the total global warming impact of the gases from reservoirs.” The remaining emissions are carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.

Methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide and emissions have previously been difficult to measure, but new research is using tools such as bubble-tracking sonar to measure methane bubbles.

Researchers from the Washington State University along with colleagues from around the world looked at the results of more than 100 studies of emissions from 250 reservoirs around the world.

The startling results are leading to calls for reservoir emissions to be included in calculations made by countries and organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when gauging greenhouse gas emissions.

The emissions from reservoir water surfaces are comparable to those from rice paddies or biomass burning, both of which are incorporated in carbon budgeting, the study says.

The new information also points to the need for countries to look carefully at where they build dams.

The emissions, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, come from decomposing plant material under the water and methane is produced by microbes devouring rotting material, such as algae, in sediment that builds up behind dams. The emissions are then boosted by nutrients that come from human activities such as agriculture or septic systems.

Natural lakes produce less greenhouse gases as there is not so much rotting material beneath the water and because reservoirs have more fluctuations in water levels than natural lakes — something which enhances methane production.

Ideally, to reduce emissions, dams should be built in areas with minimal vegetation and human activity as biologically productive reservoirs, with more algae and nutrient-rich systems, produce more methane, Deemer said.

More than one-million dams exist around the world and thousands of hydroelectric dams are in the planning or building stages, including the controversial Site C dam in B.C.’s Peace River Valley, which will create an 83-kilometre long reservoir in an agriculturally rich region of the province.

Deemer said Site C was not part of the study and she could not immediately estimate the emissions from a reservoir of that size.

The study did not look at how emissions from reservoirs compared to power generated by natural gas or coal, but a 2013 study by Edgar G. Hertwich of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that carbon dioxide emissions from hydropower, per unit of electricity delivered, were 10 per cent higher than emissions from natural gas-fired plants.

One of the B.C. government’s major arguments in favour of construction of the $9-billion Site C dam is that it would provide clean energy to British Columbians for more than a century, but this latest study brings into question whether hydropower from reservoirs can be described as green.

The project will flood 5,500 hectares of prime agricultural land and, as former farmland and forests disappear beneath the water, the reservoir will meet all criteria, pinpointed in the research paper for producing large quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases.

Site C critic Ken Boon, who is being forced off his third-generation family farm by BC Hydro to allow for highway re-alignment away from the Site C flood zone, said the study provides some interesting revelations.

“Going through the environmental assessment process, BC Hydro really diminished the greenhouse gases that would result from Site C, so it really wasn’t a big issue going through the review hearings,” he said. A June 2016 report released by the University of British Columbia found the greenhouse gas impacts of the Site C dam eliminate any possibility of the project’s advantage over alternative forms of power production like wind and solar.

“Now, again, the landscape changes and it’s one more strike against building large hydroelectric dams,” he said.

Boon hopes that Premier Christy Clark will take notice of the new information, but he is not optimistic.

“She seems to have a whole hypocritical, twisted view of climate change,” Boon said.

Helen Knott, a member of the Prophet River First Nation and active Site C opponent, pointed out that the provincial government’s reason in 2010 for exempting Site C from a B.C. Utilities Commission review was that it was a green project.

“Actually it is not a green project and this is just one more reason why it should not be built,” said Knott, pointing to myriad other problems with Site C such as questionable economics, opposition by First Nations and loss of agricultural land and food security.

“And now there is this. It’s just a project that doesn’t make sense,” Knott said.

BC Hydro and Environment Ministry spokespeople did not respond to questions about the study by time of publication.

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By Ben Parfitt for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Efforts by BC Hydro to ban potentially destructive natural gas company fracking operations in the vicinity of its biggest dams fall well short of what an Alberta hydro provider has achieved, raising questions about why British Columbia isn’t doing more to protect public safety.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives show that BC Hydro officials have feared for years that fracking-induced earthquakes could damage its dams and reservoirs.

Senior dam safety officials with the public hydro utility even worried for a time that natural gas companies could drill and frack for gas directly below their Peace River dams, which would kill hundreds if not thousands of people should they fail.

“The Montney gas field has vertical stratification of subsurface [natural gas] rights, so there may actually be a number of different owners laying claim under our damsites,” BC Hydro’s director of dam safety, Stephen Rigbey said in an April 2012 email released in response to the FOI.

No Mandated Frack-free Zones Near Dams

Yet, after years of discussions with B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), which regulates oil and gas industry activities in the province, BC Hydro has obtained only modest commitments to prevent fracking near its two Peace River dams — the massive WAC Bennett dam, which impounds the world’s seventh-largest reservoir, and the smaller Peace Canyon dam downstream.

The restrictions, which BC Hydro’s director of dam safety Stephen Rigbey describes as “an understanding,” also apply to a third dam on the river, the controversial $9-billion Site C project, currently in pre-construction.

Both BC Hydro and the OGC say that the understanding is that “there will be no new tenures” issued to companies wishing to drill and frack for natural gas within five kilometres of BC Hydro’s dams. However, companies holding existing rights would not be prevented from doing so.

“If future activity related to the existing tenures is planned, we will work closely with the Oil and Gas Commission to put restrictions in place to effectively manage any risk,” Rigbey said in an email response to questions.

What those measures would be remains the subject of ongoing discussions. No restrictions are presently in place around any of the massive reservoirs impounded by BC Hydro’s Peace River dams or the lands that could one day surround the Site C reservoir.

In an email response to questions, the OGC said that at this point in time, the Ministry of Natural Gas Development “is not accepting any new requests for subsurface [natural gas] rights within 5 kilometres of the Site C construction area.”

The Commission went on to say that “there are no active hydraulic fracturing operations” within the five kilometres of BC Hydro’s Peace River dams but that there are “a small amount of existing subsurface rights issued within the 5 km buffer zone around Site C.”

“These were issued prior to the creation of the buffer. Any applications in that area, or elsewhere, go through a strict review process before permits are issued. The Commission is also talking with BC Hydro about any additional permit conditions that would be required to protect public safety and the environment in the area specifically, before construction occurs on Site C.”

The measures to date in B.C., fall well short of what Alberta hydro provider, TransAlta, has achieved. In interviews and correspondence with the company, TransAlta revealed that it has effectively shut down all fracking within five kilometres of one of its dams and also around the entire dam’s reservoir as well. And it has succeeded in imposing restrictions on potentially destructive fracking operations in a zone up to ten kilometres away from its damsite.

But, as is the case in B.C., there is nothing in writing to reassure members of the public — no regulation or government statement — banning natural gas companies from fracking near sensitive infrastructure such as hydro dams and reservoirs. Both provinces appear reluctant even to suggest that fracking is inappropriate in certain cases where public safety is concerned, perhaps fearing the precedent such an admission would represent.

“At this time there is no regulated/government mandated exclusion areas near critical infrastructure in Alberta,” says TransAlta’s chief media spokesperson, Stacey Hatcher. Rather, Hatcher says, an “agreement” has been reached to exclude some hydro dams and reservoirs from fracking zones.

Christy Clark’s Conflicting Agendas

BC Hydro’s modest achievements to date come as the Christy Clark government pursues two at times conflicting agendas. On the one hand, the government vows to push its Site C hydro dam, the most expensive infrastructure project in B.C.’s history, “past the point of no return.” On the other, it continues to aggressively push for Malaysian state-owned Petronas to invest billions of dollars to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) processing plant near Prince Rupert and to tarnish all those who oppose the project. Should such a plant be built, natural gas drilling and fracking near the Peace River and its hydro facilities would significantly ramp up.

In an April 2012 email, Rigbey likened potential fracking in the Peace to “carpet bombing,” and added that much of the anticipated fracking in future years would occur across the “well-established” regional stress regime.

Even if no such plant materializes in B.C. — an increasing likelihood given the recent announcement that another LNG proponent, Shell, appears ready to scrap its bid to build one — an upswing in natural gas prices would almost certainly result in increased gas drilling and fracking operations, including on lands alongside the reservoir that would be created by the Site C dam, which would flood more than 100 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries.

Documents filed by BC Hydro with a panel that reviewed the project for the provincial and federal governments noted that, even in the absence of fracking, nearly 4,000 landslides are expected to dump debris into the reservoir as a result of the Site C dam being built. The 676-page report that discusses those landslide risks makes no mention of additional risks to the reservoir should earthquakes be triggered nearby.

Martyn Brown, a former chief of staff to Premier Clark’s predecessor, Gordon Campbell, says the province’s conflicting agendas underscore a troubling aspect of the government’s regulation of oil and gas industry operations near critical infrastructure. From the outset, Brown says, the OGC has both promoted and regulated oil and gas industry activities. Limiting where companies drill and frack is simply not part of the OGC’s mandate or culture.

Brown likens the OGC to the National Energy Board. “It has a dual role as a proponent of oil and gas development, but also its regulator. And I think there is a fundamental conflict with that,” Brown says. He adds that “political oversight” of the OGC is also problematic because two Cabinet ministers — Energy and Mines Minister, Bill Bennett, and Minister of Natural Gas Development, Rich Coleman — are effectively there to “promote oil and gas activity.”

Concerns for public health and safety should mean that when tensions between the province’s publicly owned hydro utility and the natural gas industry arise it falls to a neutral ministry to determine what activities will be allowed or disallowed near critically important public infrastructure like dams and reservoirs, Brown said.

“Clearly what you need now is an independent voice in cabinet, the Environment Minister, to make broad determinations in an independent way,” Brown said. “The promoter should not be the regulator of oil and gas activities.”

Fracking-induced Earthquakes Cause Alarm

Documents released in response to the FOI request show that in both Alberta and British Columbia hydro providers have become increasingly alarmed at natural gas company incursions onto lands near their dams. The concerns have escalated as distinct clusters of earthquakes in confined areas over short periods of time have occurred in lockstep with fracking operations.

In one email, Rigbey notes that there are “no regulations to stop” oil and gas companies “from injecting into a pre-existing fault” in the rock. In other words, there is a risk that induced fractures could be forced into geologically unstable areas triggering or setting the stage for earthquakes. While gas companies might not want to tap into such faults, Rigbey noted, “accidents can happen.”

In its public pronouncements, however, BC Hydro has been more muted in its concerns. In a 551-page report filed with the joint federal-provincial panel that reviewed the Site C project for example, BC Hydro devoted less than two pages to discussing “petroleum industry-related” earthquakes and it downplayed their threats.

“The Oil and Gas Commission is now establishing procedures and requirements for monitoring and reporting of induced seismicity,” BC Hydro reported to the panel in January 2013. “Each case of induced seismicity will be evaluated on the basis of its unique site-specific characteristics, but it is proposed that hydraulic fracturing would be suspended upon detection of an earthquake of magnitude M4 or larger. It should be noted that earthquakes less than about magnitude M5 do not release enough energy to cause damage to engineered structures.”

In response to written questions, the Oil and Gas Commission said that as a result of discussions with BC Hydro the province “has established a five kilometre buffer area around the WAC Bennett, Peace Canyon and Site C dams.”

Graham Currie, the OGC’s executive director of corporate affairs, added that the Site C dam location is squarely within the Montney Basin, which contains large quantities of shale gas. Gas from dense shale rock formations can only be coaxed from the earth by extensive use of fracking.

Gail Atkinson, an expert on induced earthquakes and a professor in earth sciences at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), says induced earthquakes can be hazardous because they occur much closer to the earth’s surface than do natural earthquakes. If such events happen near dams or other surface structures, the ensuing shaking can be much worse than would be the case with a naturally occurring earthquake of the same magnitude.

The higher the number of fracking-induced earthquakes near dams, the greater the risk that one of them might be sufficiently strong enough to exceed what the dams are engineered to withstand.

“If the frequency of experiencing earthquakes near a dam increases, then the level of expected ground motions at the 1 per cent in 100 year likelihood level will increase,” Atkinson said. She warns that the risk will be greatest “in areas where the hazard was initially low because there is little natural seismicity.”

Atkinson added that even earthquakes of a “moderate” strength could damage dams or other structures if they are induced “at close distances” to such structures.

Such risks are not something that BC Hydro talks about publicly, however. In an on-line video on dam safety, for example, Rigbey talks about the threats to dams from naturally occurring earthquakes but never once even mentions fracking or the increasing number of tremors associated with it.

Alberta’s TransAlta ‘Concerned’ About Fracking Earthquakes Near Dams

Atkinson’s work has clearly influenced TransAlta’s thinking. The company is one of three organizations that funds Atkinson’s fully endowed research chair on hazards associated with induced earthquakes at UWO. The other two are the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Nanometrics, a maker of seismic monitoring equipment. TransAlta also pays for some of its engineers and dam safety officials to be part of an ongoing multi-disciplinary research effort known as the Canadian Induced Seismicity Collaboration or CISC.

The CISC’s website notes that fracking-induced earthquakes are a “pressing problem” in Western Canada and in British Columbia and Alberta particularly. “There is a significant (though very small) possibility that triggered events could be large enough to cause significant damage,” the CISC’s scientists say.

According to Hatcher, TransAlta has secured agreement from natural gas companies operating in Alberta that they will adhere to a special “traffic light” system in a zone between five kilometres and 10 kilometres from its Brazeau dam and the shorelines of the dam’s 13-kilometre-long reservoir. “The traffic light system works in a similar manner to other traffic light systems for hydraulic fracturing, with a Green (proceed)/Yellow (pause and monitor) and Red (stop) protocol,” Hatcher said in written response to questions.

“TransAlta is concerned about the potential impact of fracking induced earthquakes and continues to work with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), Alberta Environment and the oil and gas operators to ensure that hydrocarbon development occurs in a safe manner that doesn’t create unnecessary risk to existing infrastructure,” Hatcher added.

In the much more sensitive zone immediately beside the dam and reservoir and extending out five kilometres, TransAlta has effectively shut down all fracking operators after filing a number of “statements of concern” with the AER, Alberta’s equivalent of the OGC.

Hatcher said that TransAlta could not release the documents and referred questions to the AER. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has filed a second Freedom of Information request to obtain copies.

Documents released by BC Hydro in response to the first FOI show that BC Hydro was prompted to call for frack-free buffer zones around its dams after learning what TransAlta had achieved in Alberta. BC Hydro’s Peace River dams are not only the biggest power sources in the province’s hydroelectric network (the Bennett dam furnishes one-quarter of the province’s hydroelectric power), but also in the region of the province with the richest natural gas reserves.

Special Consideration Given to Underground Gas Storage Reservoir

Only one other highly sensitive, yet little known, infrastructure project in B.C. is currently the subject of special operating guidelines as far as fracking is concerned.

BC Hydro learned of those guidelines in email correspondence with the OGC.

The infrastructure in question is a massive underground storage reservoir capable of holding 77 billion cubic feet of natural gas. It is near an area called Pink Mountain, where Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Petronas, is actively engaged in building roads, well pads, freshwater and wastewater holdings ponds, compressor stations, pipeline corridors and other infrastructure integral to the gas-drilling and fracking process.

The company also has plans on the books, which the provincial government has exempted from BC Utilities Commission review, to have a privately owned and operated hydro transmission built to the Pink Mountain area from the Peace River’s hydroelectric facilities. The new line would allow Progress to burn less natural gas in compressors by switching to hydroelectricity, thus increasing the profitability of its fracked gas.

The underground gas storage facility consists of two underground storage reservoirs and is about 1,400 metres below the ground. Since the late 1980s, natural gas has typically been pumped into the reservoirs in the summer months when gas demand is low and then pumped out as needed in the fall and winter months.

Fortis Inc. announced that it was purchasing the facility from Chevron in 2015 at a cost of approximately US$266 million.

At the time of its purchase, Fortis noted that the facility could become critical in the event LNG went ahead in the province. “The facility — which is the only underground gas storage facility in B.C. offering storage to third parties — is also uniquely positioned to benefit from the completion of proposed LNG export projects, where it could provide balancing services to suppliers and LNG exporters.”

In an email response to questions, David Bennett, Fortis BC’s director of communications and external relations, said that “successful meetings” were held between the company, the OGC and the provincial Ministry of Natural Gas Development. Those talks resulted in new rules that “ensure current and future drillers and well operators are aware of the facility and operate in such a manner to maintain the integrity of the underground storage reservoirs and ensure that new well production is not taken from the ACGS [Aitken Creek Gas Storage] reservoirs.”

In a follow-up phone conversation, Bennett said that Fortis had no fears that fracking into the reservoir could result in a cataclysmic event such as an explosion. The main concern, he said, is to avoid someone taking gas out of the reservoirs by fracking into them. “We don’t want anyone interfering with the reservoir,” he said, adding Fortis wants Progress Energy and any other companies engaged in fracking “to stay away from the reservoir.”

Documents released through the FOI show that the OGC has “conditions for permits” in place in proximity to the gas reservoirs. The conditions do not include an outright ban on fracking or gas drilling in a buffer area around the reservoirs. On maps supplied by the OGC, the buffer area is irregularly shaped but in most cases extends less than five kilometres out from the reservoirs.

In email correspondence, the OGC said that any company holding a permit to drill and frack for gas near the reservoirs “must not conduct any drilling completions or well operations” that have “a material adverse impact on the integrity or safe operation” of the facilities.

How this is monitored and enforced is not clear.

Natural gas companies operating in the zone are also required to notify Fortis when a well is about to be drilled and fracked. They must also notify the company when they resume drilling following “a temporary suspension” of such operations.

The special permit conditions, which BC Hydro has a copy of, do not specify what would lead to a “temporary suspension.” But earthquakes induced by fracking are among those events that have triggered stoppages in previous fracking operations.

Like the arrangements that have been worked out with BC Hydro, the special operating conditions at Aitken Creek are not common knowledge. Neither the OGC, nor the Ministry of Energy and Mines, nor the Ministry of Natural Gas Development has issued a press release stating that the special permit conditions, such as they are, are in place in the Aitken Creek area.

Much like the silence surrounding buffer zones around B.C.’s biggest hydroelectric dams, the government seems to be of the view that the less said, the better.

– Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office and author of Fracking Up Our Water, Hydro Power and Climate: BC’s Reckless Pursuit of Shale Gas, a research report published in 2011 that called for frack-free zones.

Image: A sign indicates underground cables at the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. Carol Linnitt/DeSmog Canada

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By Ben Parfitt for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Senior BC Hydro officials have quietly feared for years that earthquakes triggered by natural gas industry fracking operations could damage its Peace River dams, putting hundreds if not thousands of people at risk should the dams fail.

Yet the Crown corporation has said nothing publicly about its concerns, opting instead to negotiate behind the scenes with the provincial energy industry regulator, the BC Oil and Gas Commission (OGC).

To date, those discussions have resulted in only modest “understandings” between the hydro provider and the OGC that would see a halt in the issuance of any new “subsurface rights” allowing companies to drill and frack for natural gas within five kilometres of the Peace River’s two existing dams or an approved third dam on the river, the controversial $9-billion Site C project. Companies already holding such rights, however, would not be subject to the ban.

But once again, none of this is public knowledge. Only after the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives filed a Freedom of Information request with BC Hydro did the Crown corporation disclose its concerns, which focus on the possibility that fracking could trigger earthquakes more powerful than some of its dams are designed to withstand.

Documents released by the Crown corporation under the FOI show that in December 2009 senior officials at BC Hydro became alarmed at oil and gas industry operations on lands near its Peace Canyon Dam. The dam is 23 kilometres downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, a 49-year-old structure that impounds the world’s seventh-largest hydro reservoir by water volume.

Of concern was an experiment underway to extract methane gas from coal seams in proximity to the Peace River. Coal bed methane extraction had never before been tried in B.C., although it had been done extensively in several U.S. states and in Alberta with sometimes disastrous results, including instances of water so badly contaminated with gas that people could set their household tap water on fire.

To extract such gas, companies drill into relatively shallow coal seams and then pressure-pump immense amounts of water into wellbores in fracking operations. Fracking creates cracks or fractures in the coal seams that allow trapped gas to be released. Typically, companies then “de-saturate” or de-water the sites by pumping water out so the gas can flow.

At the time, Hudson’s Hope Gas, a subsidiary of Canada Energy Partners and GeoMet Inc., had drilled at least eight coal bed methane wells near the community of Hudson’s Hope, which lies about nine kilometres downstream of the Peace Canyon Dam and is home to more than 1,000 people.

The company had plans to drill and frack up to 300 more wells, with at least three of those wells situated close to the Peace Canyon Dam. The plans clearly alarmed BC Hydro’s then chief safety, health and environment officer, Ray Stewart, who called them an “immediate” threat to the region’s hydro facilities.

“The production of coal bed methane from these wells involves hydro-fracturing [fracking] to increase permeability of the coal seams, followed by extraction of groundwater to de-saturate coal seams and allow methane gas to be released,” Stewart noted in a letter to the provincial Ministry of Environment’s Glen Davidson, then British Columbia’s comptroller of water rights.

“BC Hydro believes that there are immediate and future potential risks to BC Hydro’s reservoir, dam and power generation infrastructure as a result of this.”

Stewart went on to warn that the “potential effects” of such actions could be natural gas industry-induced earthquakes that were greater in magnitude “than the original design criteria for the dam.” What risks this posed to people and communities immediately downstream of the dam, he did not say.

Stewart also warned that fracking could “reactivate” ancient faults in the region, which could potentially set the stage for earthquakes. He also warned of unspecified “hydrogeologic impacts” on hydro reservoirs from fracking and the potential for site-specific areas of land to subside or sink as a result of immense amounts of water being pumped out of the earth or in the event that de-watered coal seams somehow ignited.

There are no further such letters from Stewart in the documents supplied by BC Hydro. Part of the reason for that may be that coal bed methane extraction was a short-lived phenomenon in B.C. No company in the Peace region or anywhere else in the province for that matter is currently drilling or fracking for such gas.

However, no sooner had natural gas companies dropped their pursuit of coal bed methane than they turned to another so-called “unconventional” fossil fuel — shale gas. The Montney Basin, which underlies much of the Peace River region, is rich in shale gas. But extracting shale gas, which is tightly bound up in rock formations, requires the use of even greater brute force fracking technology. More water must be pumped at even higher pressure to fracture the rock and extract the trapped gas than is the case with coal bed methane, which is typically found closer to the earth’s surface.

Big Dams & a Big Fracking Problem in BC’s Energy-rich #PeaceRiver Region https://t.co/6JslA7kIPj @christyclarkbc @maryforbc #bcpoli #SiteC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 16, 2016

As fracking for shale gas became more common, senior officials at BC Hydro began to see a pattern. Earthquakes started occurring in lockstep with fracking operations. One of the most pronounced examples occurred in the Farrell Creek fracking zone, near BC Hydro’s Peace River dams. Between July 2010 and March 2013, a dozen earthquakes were recorded in the region, ranging from a low of 1.6 magnitude on the Richter scale to a high of 3.4.

The cluster of earthquakes, all in roughly the same confined region where one company, Talisman Energy, was involved in extensive fracking operations, caught the attention of Scott Gilliss, BC Hydro’s dam safety engineer in the Peace River region.

Gilliss made his concerns known to senior officials at head office. Shortly after that, he received an email from Des Hartford, Hydro’s principal engineering scientist, who reported directly to Stephen Rigbey, the corporation’s director of dam safety.

“Scott,” Hartford’s email began: “As was discussed at the Department Meeting yesterday, this is to confirm that having brought forward your concerns about hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) activities in proximity of dams and reservoirs, you have discharged your responsibilities with respect to reporting and management of this matter. It is now up to Stephen as advised by me to determine what if any action should be taken by Dam Safety with respect to this matter.”

“Fundamentally,” Hartford’s email continued, “hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) is one of these ‘new and emergent’ threats that require examination in the context of scientific and policy considerations in order that any meaningful management actions can be initiated if required.”

Hartford instructed Gilliss to document his concerns so that others at BC Hydro could “take them forward.”

Gilliss did so, pointing out in a subsequent email released by BC Hydro that “oil and gas production may have contributed to a dam breach” at the Baldwin Hill Dam in Los Angeles in 1963.

The Baldwin Hill breach, as described by award-winning investigative reporter and writer Andrew Nikiforuk in his most recent book Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, occurred at a then new dam, and resulted in a “colossal rupture that sent 292 million gallons of water spilling into a residential community, destroying hundreds of homes and killing five people.”

A subsequent review of the catastrophe by Richard Meehan, a leading expert on fluid migration at Stanford University, and Douglas Hamilton, a prominent civil engineer, concluded that “fluid injection” by the oil and gas industry, combined with sinking ground around the dam had led to the structure’s sudden and ultimately deadly failure.

“This is the case study that triggered my concern over hydraulic fracturing in the Peace,” Gilliss wrote in an email to Hartford on March 17, 2013. “The Baldwin hills case appeared to have occurred following very intense [oil and gas industry] exploration and development, the likes of which we don’t have here yet. The geology of their site was also quite complex and riddled with faults. A similarity does exist in that there are two small thrust faults downstream of PCN [the Peace Canyon Dam] which dip beneath the dam. Reactivation of these small faults could be problematic for PCN. There are other north south trending fault[s] in the area.”

Gilliss ended his letter on a note of exasperation.

“In my view, which I have already shared, the province should simply add buffer zones around any very Extreme and Very High Consequence Dams, where hydraulic fracturing cannot be undertaken without a prior full investigation into the risks, and an implemented risk management plan. Why is this so difficult?”

Gilliss’s buffer zone idea was by no means new. Two years earlier, after conducting research for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, I had authored a report calling for “no-go zones” where fracking was prohibited to protect other important resources such as water. By then, there were also de facto bans on fracking in Quebec and New York State.

After writing his email, Gilliss and other top BC Hydro officials had even more reason to think that no-go zones made sense. More and more earthquakes in northeast B.C. were being triggered by fracking, including a magnitude 4.6 tremor that occurred to the north of Fort St. John last year. It was in an area then being actively fracked by Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned Petronas. The strength of that induced earthquake was the largest to date anywhere in the world associated with fracking operations.

Petronas is behind a controversial proposal to build a massive Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG terminal at Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. The raw gas for the plant would come almost entirely from northeast B.C., including the Peace River area, and would have to be fracked to be produced. This fact has led some people who oppose the project to refer to it not as an LNG project but an LFG or Liquefied Fracked Gas project.

At least some of that gas would come from lands adjacent to what could one day be a new 83-kilometre-long reservoir impounded by the Site C Dam. Like the upstream Bennett Dam, Site C would be an earth-filled dam.

This image from the BC Hydro documents shows a no-frack zone surrounding the Site C dam on the Peace River.

The Bennett dam, completed in 1967, is now almost exactly halfway through its projected 100-year operating life. At nearly two kilometres across and the height of a 60-storey building, it is one of the largest earth-filled dams in North America. In 1996, it became the subject of intense engineering and safety scrutiny when two sinkholes suddenly opened at the crest of the dam.

In an investigative magazine article written a few years after that discovery, writer Anne Mullens noted that were the dam to fail, it would unleash a torrent of water so powerful that it would wipe out the Peace Canyon dam downstream, sending an “unstoppable burst of water 135 metres high,” down on the residents of Hudson’s Hope and communities much farther downstream.

“Unlike a tsunami, the destruction wouldn’t simply peak and stop,” Mullens wrote in BC Business Magazine. “The pent-up waters of Williston Lake would just keep coming, seeking to return to its natural elevation. The waters would flow for weeks, scouring away communities like Old Fort, Taylor, Peace River, Fort Smith and beyond. The onslaught would back up tributaries and inundate the entire Peace River Basin, flooding Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake. The floods could devastate northern Alberta, portions of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories all the way to the Arctic Ocean. The death toll could be high; the environmental and structural damage astronomical. Combined with the loss of generating power of the dam, the unprecedented disaster would cost billions of dollars and throw B.C.’s economy into turmoil.”

Stephen Rigbey, BC Hydro’s director of dam safety, says that in the aftermath of the discovery and repair of those sinkholes the Bennett dam has become “one of the world’s most studied and instrumented dams.” There are a number of upgrades underway at the dam, including the replacement of “large rocks on the upstream face of the dam that protect the dam from wind and wave action.”

In an interview following the release of the FOI materials, Rigbey said that Gilliss and other dam safety officials operating in the field are paid to worry, but that he himself has no concerns that fracking operations would trigger any catastrophic failure at BC Hydro’s Peace River dams.

Rigbey did say, however, that ground motions from fracking operations could cause slight alterations to “weak bedrock” near the dams and that in turn could change the way that water naturally seeps through earth-filled dams. Ground motions could also potentially knock some electrical control equipment off-line, Rigbey added. In the event that one or both happened, BC Hydro would be faced with high repair and maintenance costs.

“Would it [fracking] bring the dam down? Not a hope. Would it do damage and cost me a lot of money? Absolutely. It would cost me a lot of time and a lot of money and that’s what I don’t want to occur,” Rigbey said.

Rigbey said that for these reasons BC Hydro has sought to exclude fracking from zones nearby the Bennett and Peace Canyon dams and around the construction zone of the Site C dam.

At this point in time, the unwritten “understanding” between the OGC and Hydro is that no new tenures will be awarded to companies allowing them access to natural gas deposits in a zone within five kilometres of the three dam sites. Companies already holding such rights will, however, be allowed to drill and frack for gas. In the event that happens, BC Hydro says it will work with the OGC “to effectively manage any risk.”

“This is a work in progress,” Rigbey said. “We are working toward strengthening the current understanding.”

Graham Currie, the OGC’s executive director of corporate affairs, confirmed in an email response to questions that five-kilometre buffers are in place around the two existing dams and the proposed Site C dam. He said that the buffer zone around Site C will “prevent the sale of oil and gas rights within the buffer area.”

Currie added that the proposed Site C dam falls within the Montney shale gas zone, one of the most actively drilled and fracked zones in the province.

“Site C falls within the Montney play and will be built to a high seismic safety standard,” Currie said in an email response to questions filed with the OGC. “During construction, permit conditions on a [natural gas] well in the Montney may be used to control the timing of hydraulic fracturing operations. All wells in the Montney are double-lined with cement and steel to a depth of 600 meters for further protection.”

The email fails to mention that such protective measures do not prevent fracking-induced earthquakes. Cement casings, which are often imperfectly poured and prone to fail, are intended to prevent groundwater from being contaminated — an entirely different issue.

The “understanding” between Hydro and the OGC does not extend to the lands around the reservoirs themselves, Currie said. That includes lands around what could one day be the Site C reservoir; lands that according to a document prepared for BC Hydro could experience as many as 4,000 landslides during and after the reservoir fills. Whether or not fracking could further destabilize those lands damaging the reservoir and dam itself remains unknown.

What is known, however, is that earthquakes induced by fracking behave entirely differently than do naturally-occurring earthquakes.

Gail Atkinson is a professor in Earth Sciences, a leading expert on the effects of induced earthquakes, and holds the Industrial Chair in Hazards from Induced Seismicity at the University of Western Ontario. The chair is funded, in part, by TransAlta, a privately owned hydro provider in Alberta.

In response to written questions, Atkinson said most people would agree with the proposition that “precluding oil and gas activity such as fracking…within some radius of dams and reservoirs would prevent the possibility of induced seismicity that could damage such facilities.”

Atkinson said the big concern with earthquakes triggered by events such as fracking is that they occur much closer to the earth’s surface than do natural earthquakes. A fracking-induced tremor might be as close to the surface as two kilometres, while a natural earthquake might occur 10 kilometres down. The shaking caused by a fracking-induced earthquake may be of only short duration, but it is a stronger and different kind of shaking. The potentially “strong ground motions” generated by such shaking occur “closer to infrastructure on the surface.”

“The concern is that the potential for induced earthquakes to generate strong motions makes it difficult to satisfy the high safety requirements for critical infrastructure, if earthquakes can be induced by operations in very close proximity [to dams and reservoirs],” Atkinson said.

While there is presently “no consensus” over what constitutes a reasonable size for no-frack zones, buffer zones do make sense, Atkinson said. “A zone of monitoring beyond the buffer zone is also a good precautionary measure in my view, as it would allow low-level induced seismicity from disposal or fracking beyond the buffer to be detected quickly and any necessary measures to be taken. Enhanced monitoring would also provide valuable research data to improve our understanding of the issue.”

In a telephone interview, Rigbey said he agreed with Atkinson’s thinking that both firm no-fracking buffer zones and special management zones beyond that made sense.

Atkinson’s thinking is in keeping with ongoing efforts by TransAlta to protect some of its hydro facilities in Alberta from natural gas industry fracking operations. Those efforts appear to have effectively shut down fracking in a buffer zone around one of TransAlta’s dams and the dam’s reservoir as well. Special operating guidelines are also in place beyond the buffer zones that can force companies to cease fracking.

But, as is the case in B.C., negotiations between TransAlta and Alberta’s energy industry regulator have happened behind closed doors.

Members of the public who are at direct risk should a catastrophic dam failure occur are kept in the dark when it comes to negotiations that could have a direct impact on their lives.

Tomorrow: Alberta’s advances and questions about why B.C. may be lagging behind.

Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office and author of Fracking Up Our Water, Hydro Power and Climate: BC’s Reckless Pursuit of Shale Gas, a research report published in 2011 that called for frack-free zones.

BC Hydro Fracking Radius Images Select FOI

BC Hydro Fracking Radius Select FOI Materials

Image: Fracking operations in Northeast B.C. Photo: Damien Gillis/Commonsense Canadian

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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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A new video released today by DeSmog Canada features an exclusive video interview with Harry Swain, chair of the federal-provincial panel tasked with reviewing the controversial Site C dam.

“I think we’re making a big mistake, a very expensive one,” Swain says in the video. “Of the $9 billion it will cost, at least $7 billion will never be returned. You and I as rate payers will end up paying $7 billion bucks for something we get nothing for."

Since 2005, domestic demand for electricity in B.C. has been essentially flat, making it difficult to justify the dam which will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River and destroy thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land.  

“There is no need for Site C,” Swain says. “If there was a need, we could meet it with a variety of other renewable and smaller scale sources.”

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, Site C dam is the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history. The joint review panel that Swain chaired found demand for the power had not been proven and called for the project to be reviewed by the B.C. Utilities Commission — a recommendation the B.C. government ignored.

Swain first spoke out about the Site C dam last year, but this is the first video interview on the subject with the former deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. 

“The provinces have the responsibility for the management of natural resources. I don’t think British Columbia has done its job,” Swain says, referring to B.C.’s failure to investigate alternatives to the Site C dam.

EXCLUSIVE video: review chair says there's no need for #SiteC https://t.co/HWLbWAhNiJ #bcpoli @christyclarkbc pic.twitter.com/5Cc1pprN4t

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 21, 2016

Three Decades and Counting: How B.C. Has Failed to Investigate Alternatives to Site C Dam

Swain outlined the economic case against the dam in an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun on Friday.

The new DeSmog Canada video also features interviews with residents of the Peace River Valley.  

“We have to get away from this 1960s mentality of building large hydroelectric dams,” says farmer Ken Boon. “All you have to do is look around the world. They’ve come to their senses. They’re tearing them out.”

School teacher and mother of three Carolyn Beam says it’s not possible for BC Hydro to compensate her family for the loss of their home.

“I’d hate to have to tell my children in the future why we lost what we lost,” Beam says.

Field of Dreams: Meet the Peace Valley’s Farmers and Ranchers

The Royal Society of Canada recently called on the Prime Minister to halt construction on the project until after First Nations concerns have been heard, but the feds are so far trying to side step the issue.

For construction to continue on the Site C dam, the federal government must issue permits. But Prime Minister Trudeau vowed to start a new relationship with Canada’s indigenous peoples and two First Nations are challenging the dam in court.

Trudeau also recently signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states indigenous peoples must give “free, prior and informed consent."

B.C. Premier Christy Clark has vowed to get the dam "past the point of no return."

Civil society organizations like Amnesty International, the David Suzuki Foundation and LeadNow are all calling on the federal government to halt construction.

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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

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Major industrial power users in British Columbia fear that if the proposed Site C dam becomes a reality, rate hikes could put mills and mines out of business while saddling taxpayers with a costly white elephant and ballooning BC Hydro debt.

A decision on the $7.9 billion plan to build a third hydroelectric dam on the Peace River will be made by the federal and provincial governments this fall.

Economic questions about the mega-project were raised by last month’s joint review panel report, which noted the dam would likely be “the largest provincial public expenditure of the next 20 years.”

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The panel, which did not come out for or against the project, found that, based on cost comparisons provided by BC Hydro, Site C would be the most economical way to provide new power — but said it could not measure the true cost or need and recommended the B.C. Utilities Commission should look at it, an idea immediately dismissed by Energy Minister Bill Bennett. (The commission turned down the Site C project in the early ’80s.)

Strong opposition to Site C is now coming from the unlikely direction of the Association of Major Power Customers of B.C., an organization representing about 20 of the largest employers and industrial customers in the province.

“We have absolutely no confidence that this is the least cost plan,” association executive director Richard Stout told DeSmog Canada.

“It’s not the right project right now”

Major industrial power users in B.C. have seen a 50 per cent increase in rates over the last five years and are looking at another 50 per cent over the next five years, he said.

“It is unusual for us to criticize a government of this stripe, but BC Hydro has been out of control for a good 10 years,” Stout said, pointing to almost $5-billion in deferred accounts.

“Any other business would have been declared bankrupt by now,” he said.

Site C will take a decade to build and, with changing markets and a burgeoning natural gas industry causing a surplus of generating capacity in North America, it is almost impossible to accurately predict demand and prices, Stout said.

“All we know is the original load forecasts are going to be wrong,” he said. “It’s not the right project right now.”

Craig Thomson, energy and environment supervisor at Canfor Taylor pulp mill told DeSmog Canada that industry in B.C. was built with a foundation of low power rates, but in the last five years that has changed and Site C would be the final straw.

“I think the cost of hydro-electric dam construction is so astronomical that no one will ever do it again and we’re going to have this huge white elephant,” he said.

“Potentially it’s going to drive our industry out of business.”

B.C.’s natural gas hypocrisy

Doubts are growing about cost comparisons made by BC Hydro, which didn’t include the use of gas power because the 2010 Clean Energy Act demands that 93 per cent of the province’s energy needs be met by clean, renewable power.

The act effectively eliminated the use of gas turbines and sent the gas-fired Burrard Thermal generating station into early retirement.

But the province has now handed a Clean Energy Act exemption to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, a move that allows gas plants to meet their massive power needs with natural gas. Meantime, BC Hydro is prevented from using natural gas even as a backup to renewables.

“It’s really hypocritical to allow them [LNG facilities] to burn gas,” Merran Smith at Clean Energy Canada told DeSmog Canada. “The carbon emissions, as well as the air pollution, are inconsistent with the province’s goals.”

“Gas is a fossil fuel. It may be cleaner than coal or oil, but it still has a heavy carbon footprint.”

Should gas turbines be allowed for backup power?

Like many others, Stout believes alternatives to Site C should be considered, including the use of gas turbines as an intermittent source of power — something that would first need the government to change the Clean Energy Act.

Thomson is looking at new technologies coming on stream and, in the meantime, Burrard Thermal, with a similar capacity to Site C, could provide sufficient intermittent power, he suggested.

“Electricity is 32 per cent of our operating cost and, if it goes up and up, someone is going to say the business is not viable and the doors will close,” he warned.

Energy economics expert Marvin Shaffer, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, believes Burrard Thermal should never have been eliminated as a source of backup energy.

“I’m not suggesting that an old, relatively inefficient plant like Burrard should be used as a base load facility. What Burrard can do is provide a very cost-effective backup to the hydro system as well as back-up peak capacity exactly where it might be required,” Shaffer said.

Burrard Thermal generating station was sent into early retirement with the introduction of the 2010 Clean Energy Act. Credit: Niall Williams via Flickr.

With Burrard in place, B.C. would have no shortfall of energy until 2033 and, even without Burrard, strategically placed gas thermal plants could supply low cost energy as needed, he said.

Faced with Site C as the alternative to intermittently using gas turbines, even Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee comes down on the side of occasional gas use.

“It seems a better solution than drowning 100 kilometres of farmland when you don’t even need that power for 300 days of the year,” he said.

Oxford study: Dams routinely come in 90% over budget

Many also have concerns that, when costs such as transmission lines are factored in, Site C’s cost will soar above $7.9 billion.

Fears that costs will run amuck are backed by an Oxford University study of power dams that found construction costs of large dams are, on average, more than 90 per cent higher than their budgets.

Mark Winfield, associate professor in the environmental studies faculty at York University, sees parallels between Site C and costly nuclear power plant plans in Ontario.

“Large hydro projects like Site C and nuclear power plant construction or refurbishment reflect a focus on large, centralized, high-cost, high-risk, high-environmental impact, long-lived generating infrastructure,” he said.

That limits opportunities for the system to adapt to market changes and sets the focus on only one path, Winfield said.

“In both cases there are significant uncertainties about future demand and, therefore, substantial risk of making major investments in projects which may turn out not to be needed or which are overtaken by newer, better technologies,” he said.

Site C’s legacy: cheap power or wealth destruction?

Dan Potts, former executive director of the Association of Major Power Customers of B.C., believes the lasting legacy of Site C would be wealth destruction.

“The huge cost will rob the province of valuable resources that could be used to deliver other needed government services as well as burden the B.C. economy with debt and high electric power rates that will sap our competitiveness,” he said.

Times have changed from when previous dams were built on the Peace and Columbia Rivers, said Potts, who has calculated that gas prices would have to almost quadruple before power from Site C would be economically viable for export.

“B.C. Hydro has filed information that the cost of electric power from Site C will be in the range of $100 per megawatt hour. Current market prices are in the range of $30 per megawatt hour. If Site C were now operational, the market value of the power produced would be $350 million per year less than the cost,” Potts said.

Site C will lose $800 million in first four years: report

The possibility of exporting excess power to help fund the dam was discounted by the joint review panel, which predicted that, unless prices changed radically, B.C. Hydro operations would lose $800-million in the first four years of operations:

These losses would come home to B.C. ratepayers in one way or another. B.C. Hydro’s expectation is that it might sell Site C surpluses for only about one-third of costs, leaving B.C. ratepayers to pay for the rest.

But the panel also says that Site C, after an initial burst of expenditure, would lock in low rates for decades and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than other sources.

Ignoring the Clean Energy Act is not an option for BC Hydro and there is no doubt Site C compares favourably to other clean energy costs, said Hydro spokesman Dave Conway. In comparison to Site C power at $100 per megawatt hour, new generation from wind or micro-hydro comes in at $128 per megawatt hour, he said.

However, the panel noted that geothermal energy would cost about the same as Site C power — and as a firm source of power could present a viable alternative to the dam. Geothermal could be built incrementally to meet demand, eliminating the early-year losses of Site C, the panel noted.

Even without Site C, customers are looking at a 28 per cent increase in rates over the next five years, but British Columbians should bear in mind that they are paying one of the four lowest energy rates in North America, Conway said.

However, Foy would like all British Columbians to consider what else could be done with almost $8-billion.

“Maybe better education for kids or health care?” he asked.

“If we spend $8-billion on Site C, what community doesn’t get a health care facility?”

Image Credit: An area of the Peace River Valley threatened by Site C. Photo by tuchodi via Flickr.

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