In 2015, a pipeline was designed to cut through a sensitive wetland in B.C. The professional biologist reviewing the project told his company that there could be significant damage to the wetland and an extensive monitoring program would have to be set up to watch for effects.

The larger consultancy the biologist’s company worked for refused to submit the report to the pipeline company.

“They took it and rewrote it, basically,” he told DeSmog Canada. “It wasn’t my document anymore.”

The biologist, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, said he engaged in a protracted battle with the consultancy, with little effect.

Eventually the B.C. provincial environmental assessment office stepped in and recommended the same monitoring system he originally suggested.

That fight to alter the environmental impacts documented in a scientific report is just one example of the ways professional biologists, engineers, geoscientists and others across the country face pressure from a system with few legislated requirements for scientific rigour.

In interviews with several current and former consultants, the notion was raised again and again that strict rules for scientific integrity could provide a backstop for professionals who are being pressured to alter their recommendations to benefit a project.

That could be about to change, as the federal government introduces a new Impact Assessment Act to replace Canada’s controversial and much-maligned Environmental Assessment Act.

A large majority of Canadians want the new Act to include stricter rules around the inclusion of science, according to a new study released Monday in the journal Facets.

Looking at the comments from public, industry and government solicited by an expert review panel, researchers found the public overwhelmingly asked for more rigorous and transparent scientific analysis of projects during an environmental review.

“In the online questionnaire, people had to rank their top three concerns; science comes out way up there,” said Aerin Jacob, an author of the new study.

The sample of opinions — being drawn from written submissions to the standing committee — is admittedly self-selecting, leaving the paper open to criticisms of selection bias.

“These are people who care enough to be involved, whatever their views are,” Jacob concedes. But other surveys conducted in more traditional ways have returned similar results.

Coauthor Jonathan Moore says what makes the survey unique is that it’s a way of looking at what people are telling the government — thus allowing people to evaluate what the government actually does with that information.

For example, while industry, scientists and the public were aligned on some issues, such as transparency in the government’s decision making, one major area in which industry opinions differed from those of scientists and the public was how rigorous science should be in environmental assessments.

“I think what that means is that the degree to which the government tackled that or not will reveal the degree to which environmental assessment is created for industry or created for the rest of Canada,” Moore said.

Science often not made public

While language in Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s mandate letter instructs her to “ensure that decisions are based on science, facts, and evidence, and serve the public’s interest,” there is no formal requirement for evidence to be made public before decisions are made.

The new study broke down that concept of evidence-based decision making in environmental assessments into five categories: openly sharing information, evaluating cumulative effects, scientific rigour, transparency in decision-making and independence between regulators and proponents.

“These results not only show there’s strong support across multiple sectors, they also give a road map of how to do it,” says Jacob.

“Rather than just saying you should use science or you should do evidence-based decision making — what does that actually mean? — here, we’re showing, here are five fundamental components of having a scientific approach to environmental assessments, and truly follow up on that commitment.”

Currently, the federal cabinet has a high degree of discretion once assessments have been presented to the government, and the factors that were or were not considered are not made public.

Increased transparency was one of the categories on which almost everyone agreed. For industry, it could mean saving time on environmental assessments, by knowing what was coming ahead of time. For the public, it could mean being able to hold politicians accountable for not taking into consideration promises they had made, or priorities they had professed to have.

Just three submissions were opposed to increased transparency in decision-making, compared to more than 150 in favour.

That’s reflected in the recommendations made by the expert panel: that “information be easily accessible, and permanently and publicly available.”

While the proposed new Act uses the word “transparent” several times, it does not require that data be made public by default, just that there be instructions on how the information can be obtained.

“That kind of redirection is not useful,” says Martin Olszynski, a lawyer at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law.

“You know that the agency has an internal file that contains all of that information, and we basically just say, all of that information should be on the public registry.”

“What if there’s a little bit of harm on my project, and there’s a little bit of harm on somebody else’s project, which is right downstream…Who’s looking at the big picture?” https://t.co/iyVNkwLqJy

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 7, 2018

No interconnected knowledge

That lack of transparency also means there are limited opportunities to consider cumulative impacts.

Commenters from the public and even many in industry also asked for more consideration of cumulative effects. Whether through greenhouse gas emissions, air or water quality degradation or wildlife habitat destruction, Jacob said the piling up of effects from different projects is what pushes consequences past a point of no return.

“No one project is going to do that. But together, they do,” she says.

A second professional biologist who spoke to DeSmog Canada on the condition of anonymity said cumulative impacts are among the most insidious, because without specific laws around watching for them, it’s easy to feel pressured to overlook how one project’s impacts stack on those of another nearby.

“What if there’s a little bit of harm on my project, and there’s a little bit of harm on somebody else’s project, which is right downstream…Who’s looking at the big picture?” she asked.

That gap in legislation means that industry-hired professionals have little in the way of recourse when asked to make determinations that they might otherwise feel uncomfortable making. British Columbia is currently conducting a review of the system through which paid consultants are relied upon by the province in environmental decision making (known as professional reliance). The province is also reviewing its environmental assessment process with an eye toward cumulative impacts.

Pressure on professionals

In December of 1980, David Mayhood sent in a report evaluating damage CN Rail had done to a forest in Jasper National Park. It had diverted a stream into the forest to protect its railbed. He found the stream had become impassable for fish because of logjams, while 10 hectares of forest had been wiped out.

“I was fairly graphic in the description about the damage that had been done there,” he said. But there was little appetite for graphic descriptions at the consultancy that had hired him.

“When I got the final copy of the report back with our section in it, it had been drastically changed,” he said. “Where I said an area had been devastated, they said it had been ‘altered.’ ”

Mayhood wrote a letter of protest, but the report was submitted.

He says that kind of pressure to water down language, and consequently undermine the science behind it, has persisted throughout his career.

“The fundamental issue is that biologists…should be independent,” he says. “They aren’t. They’re objectively not independent; they work for a government that has a political agenda, and private industry that also has its own agenda.”

Alana Westwood, science and policy analyst with Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, experienced that lack of independence as she began her career as a junior biologist at a consulting firm. She said that although most experiences met the standard of science, there was one particular firm that went far outside what could be considered objective science.

The consulting company was dominated by one client, an electrical generation company, which held an inordinate amount of power over the quality of science Westwood and her colleagues could do.

“I was routinely asked to do things I had no experience for or training in,” she said. For example, she was asked to conduct a bird survey in what she now knows is the off-season for the birds she was ostensibly looking for, using methods she now knows would never be effective.

And it got worse, when she was asked to do a literature review of the known effects of a particular monitoring technique the firm’s sole client wanted to use.

“Then my boss came to me, and said, of the 20 or so papers you found, how many found no effect, or found it didn’t harm them?” she recalls. There were four papers among the 20.

Her boss was clear on what needed to be done, in order to please the client upon which the entire business turned — like so many biologists before and after her, she would be asked to compromise her training, ethics and better judgment to make life easier for a client whose priority was delivering value to shareholders, rather that protecting the environment.

“Use only those four,” Westwood recalls being told.

As the interview comes to a close, co-author Jonathan Moore loops the conversation around to hockey. In recent years, the NHL — concerned that team doctors were facing conflicts of interest as they assessed players for concussions — decided to change their system.

Today, that assessment is done by outside doctors who wouldn’t face pressure to put unfit players back on the ice.

Moore sees the same possibility for environmental assessment reform to take the pressure away from professionals to deliver what their clients want.

“I find that if Canada can do it for hockey, I would hope they could do it for making these huge decisions that affect the environment and people that rely on the environment.”

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Every day, we’re assailed with dozens of facts and figures about energy issues in Canada: how many jobs or royalties will come from a new pipeline, the annual growth rate of renewables, our per-person energy consumption.

But it’s often tricky to decipher truth from fiction.

That’s where the new 176-page encyclopedic report by veteran earth scientist and expert in coal and unconventional fuels David Hughes is meant to come in.

“Hopefully what it does is it provides the foundation of facts,” Hughes said in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “There’s a lot of rhetoric when it comes to energy. I wanted to make that quantitative so we actually had that bottom line of facts, rather than conjecture. I’m not trying to be prescriptive. I don’t have a magic answer. But I think we need to start with the facts.”

Over the course of 132 graphs and another 34 tables, Hughes — who worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for more than three decades as a scientist and research manager — meticulously chronicles and illustrates close to every imaginable part of Canada’s energy system.

There are four components to the report: 1) Canada’s actual energy production and consumption compared to the rest of the world, broken down into all the different sources; 2) the supplies and money from fossil fuel production; 3) electricity sources and trends; 4) emissions trajectories and targets.

Sounds like a few metric tonnes of info, right?

Well, while we highly recommend perusing through the report in its entirety, we’ve broken down some the 10 most noteworthy facts Hughes highlights in the report.

1. Canada uses a massive amount of energy

It might not come as a surprise to many, but Canada uses a lot of energy: more than five times the world’s average on a per-capita basis.

Hydroelectricity makes up a bigger proportion of our energy mix than other countries, but we have the exact average of dependence on oil and gas as everyone else.

When it comes to natural gas — used for heating and electricity generation — Canada uses 5.8 times the global average.

On the bright side, Canada’s coal consumption has been on the steady decline since the phase-out in Ontario. We’re already using half as much on a per-capita basis as the United States — and that trend will continue as Alberta shuts down its 18 coal-fired power plants in the coming years, with massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

2. There’s an incredible amount of hydro power in this country

Canada is the second largest hydropower producer in the world, trailing only China with its colossal Three Gorges Dam.

On a per-capita basis, Canada harnesses 20 times the power from dams as the global average — only beat out by Norway, which somehow generates 51 times the per-capita average (you’ll start to notice that Scandinavia excels at a lot of these things).

Plenty of forecasts of low-carbon futures predict that Canada will have to add a lot more hydro to the grid in the coming decades. But Hughes isn’t convinced, based on recent precedent.

“I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to build all those Site C sized dams and nuclear reactors [modelled in various reports],” he said. “Economics, ecology and public protest would be off the rails.”

3. But we kind of suck at non-hydro renewables

Unfortunately, that dam-building habit has meant Canada isn’t nearly as good at non-hydro renewables: sources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Compared to Denmark (23.7 per cent of energy from non-hydro renewables), Portugal (15.5 per cent) and Germany (12.7 per cent), Canada only generated a tiny 3.1 per cent of its energy from such sources in 2016.

That’s slightly below the world average.

This is expected to change in the coming years as provinces and territories shift towards renewables.

4. Industry uses most of the energy in Canada

While we’ve been talking about per-capita consumption, it’s not really that accurate because 51 per cent of Canada’s energy is used by industry for things like oil and gas, refining, mining, pulp and paper and chemicals. Another 23 per cent is used in transportation: freight trucks, passenger cars, airplanes.

That leaves only 14 per cent for residential and 12 per cent for commercial. In other words, it’s the big factories, mines and refineries that are using most of our energy — yet they’re often the same entities which receive exemptions or subsidies for emissions.

Given the industrial sector’s large dependence on fossil fuels to make or extract stuff, this has meant that Canada has an extremely high amount of energy required per dollar of GDP — higher than even China.

While Canada’s GDP is being slowly “decoupled” from emissions, we’re still a long ways from the lower carbon likes of Denmark or the UK.

5. Western Canada is littered with an unbelievable number of old wells

Most people will understandably picture the oilsands when they think about the Canadian oil industry. But the massive growth in extracting bitumen from Alberta’s northern boreal forest is actually a fairly new phenomenon, really kicking off around 2007.

Up until that point, conventional oil — the stuff you drill for in wells — had reigned. But production from that method peaked in 1973. That’s meant that steadily rising production has required more and more wells, as declining well productivity means that companies have to keep finding and drilling more.

“With conventional oil and gas, you’ve just got to keep drilling and pouring capital into it all the time, otherwise it goes down,” Hughes said. “Companies always drill their best land first. You always got for the sweet spots, where the best economics are.”

It’s something made even more frantic with fracking. At last count, fracking now accounts for three-quarters of all oil production from wells in Western Canada. Such wells result in high initial production but decline at an even more rapid pace than conventionals — up to 83 per cent over three years.

As a result, Western Canada is just littered with wells: more than 820,000 in total, including gas, oil and bitumen. Only 235,000 are still active. A full 38 per cent of the wells are listed as inactive, with another 11 per cent as suspended. That means companies haven’t actually dealt with the environmental liabilities — which may cost billions to reclaim in the future.

6. The oilsands still produces some of the highest carbon oil in the world

Politicians and industry often brag about Alberta’s world-class environmental regulations and claim that’s a reason to justify more oilsands expansion.

But the unfortunate reality is that Alberta oilsands crude remains incredibly carbon-intensive, with Suncor’s Synthetic H blend emitting 297 per cent as much pollution as the best-performing oil in the world (in Kazakhstan) and 161 per cent as much as conventional oil in Saskatchewan. Many other oils around the world produce cleaner barrels: Iraq, Kuwait, Brazil, Russia, UK and Norway.

It’s an incredibly energy intensive process, with an energy return on energy investment of 4:1 for in-situ and 8:1 for mining, compared to 17:1 for average global oil.

7. Alberta is receiving astonishingly little return on its oil

Another resounding narrative is that Alberta needs pipelines and oilsands expansion in order to generate massive revenues for government coffers, allowing it to build schools, hospitals and roads. But Alberta is actually receiving decreasing revenues on a per-barrel basis.

Since 1980, oil and gas production in Alberta has doubled. But royalty revenues are down by 90 per cent from that level.

Currently, non-renewable resource revenue makes up a mere 3.3 per cent of the government’s income. The same has happened in B.C., with gas royalties collapsing as production skyrockets. Corporate income taxes from fossil fuel producers have also collapsed by 51 per cent since 2006.

“The concept of high-grading and selling the best of our resources off for declining revenues to governments and people who own the resource doesn’t seem to be very smart,” Hughes quipped.

8. Fossil fuel jobs are also surprisingly low

You’d never know it from listening to Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but long-term fossil fuel jobs have effectively flatlined since 2006. Meanwhile, construction jobs now constitute 52 per cent of all jobs in the sector — but they’re short-term jobs and usually evaporate as soon as a project is completed.

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment.

Hughes was also intentional not to include so-called “spin-off” jobs in his reporting.

“What the politicians do is say ‘we’ve got to count all of the store owners and money that these workers put into the economy,’ ” he explained. “That sort of assumes the store owners would otherwise be unemployed, which is not accurate. A lot of the jobs numbers that are quoted are huge numbers of spin-off jobs.”

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment. https://t.co/5uaACUKV81

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 1, 2018

9. Meeting climate targets is going to be nearly impossible with oilsands expansion

Thanks to rapidly rising oilsands emissions, scheduled to hit 115 megatonnes by 2030, it’s appearing unlikely that Canada will hit its Paris Agreement target. Currently, we’re overshooting the mark by a full 66 megatonnes — meaning costly emissions credits will have to be bought.

It’s going to get way harder heading towards 2050. By then, oil and gas emissions will require the remainder of the economy to contract by more than 100 per cent. That will require a tremendous amount of low-carbon electricity to pull off, costing anywhere between $30 billion and $70 billion per year from 2017 to 2050.

Hughes is seriously doubtful this will happen — and instead calls for finding efficiencies and reductions from existing systems.

“Investing in reducing consumption will be a very big deal,” he said.

“To me, we have to do as much of that as we can first before spending a lot of money trying to replace business as usual. I don’t think it’s possible. Fossil fuels are just too useful, energy dense and convenient. All of our infrastructure is built based on them. But I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit for reducing consumption.”

10. We need to rely on facts to guide us forward

Hughes spent years chipping away at this report, compiling decades worth of knowledge and sources into one place. He said he’s going to continue updating it now that he has a template.

For the rest of us, the mammoth work now exists as an excellent reference and fact-checking resource for when something a politician or industry exec says sounds a bit off.

“I just want to provide a solid factual basis to go forward,” he concluded. “I’m a grandfather. I have a concern for future generations. I’m a little put off by some of the rhetoric I see on TV. We need to start with the facts and go from there. ”

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In the weeks since Kinder Morgan’s announcement that it was suspending all “non-essential spending” on the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline, we’ve seen yet another round of concerns about a spike in the shipping of oil by rail.

The argument goes that failing to build Trans Mountain means that excess oil from Alberta will just be shipped to markets by rail — a more costly option with the potential for fiery spills and explosions in the middle of communities, like what happened in Lac-Mégantic back in 2013.

But there are two major issues with such analysis: 1) there’s not enough rail capacity to substitute for pipelines; and 2) transporting oil by rail wouldn’t be nearly as unsafe as it currently is if government updates its rules and enforcement.

Ignoring such realities may allow for convenient pro-pipeline mythmaking, but not for reasonable fact-based debate.

“Governments and industry uses it to fearmonger a little bit to justify pipeline capacity expansions,” said Patrick DeRochie, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence. “But if they were actually concerned about mitigating the risks of oil by rail, there are some pretty clear and simple steps they can take.”

Here’s a breakdown of what’s actually going on.

IEA predicts rail exports could nearly triple by 2019

In February 2018, the most recent month that we have data for, Canada shipped a daily average of 134,100 barrels of oil to the United States on trains. While not an insignificant amount, it was nowhere close to the historical high of December 2014 — when oil-by-rail exports hit 175,600 barrels per day (bpd) due to pipeline constraints.

Such figures don’t include oil that’s shipped by rail across Canada. A recent Globe & Mail article reported that more than 150,000 barrels of oil are moved daily on British Columbia’s railways. Much of that ends up being exported to the United States.

To put such numbers in perspective, Alberta produced an average of 3.4 million barrels of oil per day in February. So rail shipments represented only five per cent of the province’s output.

The concern is that those numbers will rapidly rise in the near future, well beyond the December 2014 threshold.

“It’s real and people have been predicting it,” said Bruce Campbell, former executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of an upcoming book about the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. “As production keeps increasing, there’s uncertainty about the pipelines, so there is that looming possibility.”

In March, the International Energy Agency forecasted that Canada’s oil-by-rail exports could increase to 250,000 bpd in 2018 and 390,000 bpd in 2019. Kevin Birn of IHS Markit told Reuters that exports could go higher than 400,000 bpd if pipelines face more delays.

To put all those numbers in perspective, the rosiest forecast would mean an increase of 266,000 barrels per day via rail. Meanwhile, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposes to add more than double that with 590,000 barrels per day of capacity.

CP and CN already facing major backlog of grain shipments

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, there’s already a total of 754,000 bpd in rail loading capacity in Western Canada, including 210,000 bpd at Kinder Morgan’s very own co-owned terminal in Edmonton.

So why on earth aren’t oil producers using that spare rail capacity? Well, for the very same reason that some are doubtful oil-by-rail is going to see any kind of major increase: there simply aren’t enough trains to go around.

DeRochie is skeptical about projections by the International Energy Agency.

“There might be a small incremental increase in the oil being shipped by rail, but we’re looking at the tens of thousands of barrels, which is nowhere near the capacity that pipelines would introduce to the system,” DeRochie said.

Canada’s two freight rail companies, Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN), are facing ongoing criticism from grain producers on the Prairies for critical delays that have left massive quantities of wheat and canola unable to get to markets. Grain shipments are ultimately the “bread and butter” of freight rail in Canada — and the companies are failing to adequately service even them.

Rail companies look for long-term shippers

Both companies have rebuffed calls from the oil industry to enter into short-term contracts to ship more crude.

In a January conference call with investors, CP Rail CEO Keith Creel said: “We understand crude is only going to be here for a limited period of time. We are looking for strategic partners with long-term objectives that allows us to have a more stable book of business.”

Meanwhile, CN Rail requires a minimum of a year-long commitment from shippers.

Most oil companies aren’t prepared to enter into long-term contracts and are ultimately banking on new pipeline capacity opening up in the near future. After all, oil-by-rail tends to be more expensive — Birn of IHS Markit recently told CBC News that rail adds about $3 to $4 per barrel in costs — so even the ability to ship backlogged crude to market isn’t necessarily worth it given current oil prices. But rail companies won’t spend on new trains and tracks without commitment.

This week, Bloomberg reported that Cenovus had signed an oil-by-rail contract to start in the second half of the year, seeming to confirm earlier statements by CN.

But workers at CP Rail are on the verge of striking, which could shut down shipping for weeks or months. CN Rail’s CEO has already stated that his company won’t be able to “pick up the slack” if it proceeds. While likely not a long-term issue, the potential strike action represents yet another source of unpredictability for oil producers.

B.C.’s proposed regulations could curtail shipments

Add to those issues the fact that B.C.’s proposed regulations on the transport of diluted bitumen would apply to rail.

In its reference case submitted to the B.C. Court of Appeal this week, the B.C. government outlined regulations that would apply to pipelines transporting any quantity of liquid petroleum products, as well as rail or truck operations transporting more than 10,000 litres of liquid petroleum products.

The proposed regulations would require shippers to meet several spill response criteria to obtain a “hazardous substance permit” from the government.

‘Industry still seems to be running the show’

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that companies evade all these obstacles and oil-by-rail exports triple to more than 400,000 barrels per day by 2019.

There’s simply no reason that shipping oil on trains needs to be as dangerous as it currently is. As we’ve previously reported, there are a wide range of changes that could be introduced by the federal government to greatly reduce risk — amend the Railway Safety Act to restrict certain volumes of dangerous goods, accelerate the phase-out of existing railcars, increase the number of on-site inspections and improve public transparency.

But with the exception of minor changes, the federal government hasn’t moved to make rail transport of oil safe

“The industry is powerful,” Campbell said. “I’ve talked a lot about regulatory capture. Transport Canada, as far as I can tell, is still as dysfunctional as ever. Industry still seems to be running the show, and resources seem to be as wanting, to say the least. You’ve got a weak regulator with insufficient resources.”

The report of the Railway Safety Act Review is expected to be released soon, but Campbell is “almost positive” that it won’t lead to a fundamental rethinking of the system.

Shipping raw bitumen by rail eliminates costly diluent, reduces risk of explosions

There are actually many upsides to transporting oil by rail instead of pipeline.

It physically moves faster in unit trains than pipeline, and doesn’t mix with other grades of petroleum as it does with pipeline “batching.” Rail terminals are also quite low in cost — the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reported in 2014 that a typical unit train terminal ranges between $30 million to $50 million and can be paid off in five years or less.

There’s also the potential to ship raw bitumen by rail in a form known as “neatbit.”

As the name suggests, diluted bitumen that’s transported by pipeline requires diluent, a costly natural gas condensate that takes up about 30 per cent of volume in a shipment. Diluent also serves as the volatile component of the mixture, which can explode in a crash. Shipping bitumen by rail without diluent would save companies money and prevent the risk of explosions.

But it requires upfront costs to purchase heated tanker cars and special loading terminals. It’s effectively the same thing preventing the electrification of freight rail, which would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel costs: it just costs too much cash to get started, even though the payoffs would be enormous. Until the government regulates such activities, it likely won’t happen — and the safety of communities will continue to be at risk.

“The reality is that the stuff is going to keep rumbling through Canadians towns and cities across the country,” Campbell said. “While it’s doing that for the next five years or more, make it safer. There are things that can be done.”

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Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd., must be laughing all the way to check on his stock options since the Trudeau government offered to use public funds to bail out the company’s stalled Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project.

Anderson earned almost $2.9 million last year in salary, stock awards and other compensation, according to company documents — and that was only from June through December.

Kinder Morgan Canada’s vice-president, David Safari, collected $1.95 million in stock awards and other compensation during the same seven-month period.

But that’s latte money compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual dividend earnings of Texas billionaire Richard Kinder, who was the CEO of parent company Kinder Morgan Inc. until 2015.

Wednesday night, in its quarterly financial report, Kinder Morgan Inc. announced results so strong it beat its own rosy forecast for the first segment of 2018.

With US$80 billion in assets, cash is flowing and North America’s largest energy infrastructure company — which owns 70 per cent of Kinder Morgan Canada — is back in growth mode.

“Kinder Morgan Inc. Starts 2018 Off with a Bang,” read Thursday’s Yahoo Finance headline.

Yet Canadian taxpayers will be the ones to feel the biggest whomp if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley follow through on new promises to back the project financially, with Trudeau calling the Kinder Morgan pipeline a “vital strategic interest” for the country.

Notley even suggested earlier this week that her government might buy the pipeline outright if Kinder Morgan opts to abandon the $7.4 billion project once the corporation’s May 31 deadline for resolution of the fractious inter-provincial dispute has passed.

Oh happy days for Kinder Morgan’s millionaires.

Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada, earned almost $2.9 million between June and December alone. That’s latte money compared to the hundreds of millions in annual dividend earnings of Texas billionaire Richard Kinder. https://t.co/HaZQM4rVPF

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 20, 2018

Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said it is a “terrible” idea for Canadians to “bail out — apologies, ‘invest in’ ” — the profitable Houston-based corporation that owns 137,000 kilometres of pipelines and 152 terminals.

“This is not appropriate,” Wudrick told DeSmog Canada. “There is absolutely no reason public money should be going to these companies.”

Which companies? Well, Honda, for one. Last year, the Japanese conglomerate received $84 million in taxpayer funding.

And Bombardier, the world’s leading manufacturer of planes and trains, has been diving deeply into the public trough for years, even though the Bombardier family that controls the company is among Canada’s richest and the company’s top executives, already earning millions a year, were offered a hefty pay hike after a $1 billion infusion of public money last year.

“This is very offensive to most Canadians,” Wudrick said. “If people in the private sector are going to make a lot of money, it’s their own money and their own business and good for them. But taxpayers should not be funding the salaries of these executives.”

The high salaries of Kinder Morgan executives are “just one illustration” of why the company should not receive any public money, said Wudrick, who supports the pipeline while opposing a taxpayer bailout.

He believes that Trudeau and Notley have made a strategic mistake by saying how desperate they are to build a pipeline to carry product from Alberta’s oilsands to tankers on B.C.’s coast.

“Kinder Morgan now knows that, and I think frankly they’re going to drive a hard bargain. They essentially have the premier of Alberta and the prime minister of Canada by the throat and they can say ‘unless you pay us x dollars, we’re going to back out.’ ”

“That’s a very bad negotiating position for government.”

So far it looks like the big winner of the inter-provincial brawl is not B.C. or Alberta but Kinder Morgan, which appears to be emboldened by the discord.

Duff Conacher, a founder of the civic organization Democracy Watch, called Kinder Morgan’s new May 31 deadline for resolving the conflict “an attempt at extorting a step forward” that should be rejected.

“If the pipeline is such a great idea and it’s profitable, and if Kinder Morgan decides they are not going to build it, based on their completely artificial May 31 deadline, then presumably some other company will step up and build it,” Conacher pointed out in an interview.

“Why should the government jump into the market on behalf of one company?”

Those advocating for an infusion of public money into the Kinder Morgan pipeline claim the project is a guaranteed moneymaker, even though oil shipments from the existing pipeline to the lucrative Asian market have dwindled and most tankers leaving the Port of Vancouver now head south to California.

If twinning the pipeline does make sound financial sense, Wudrick also said another company will come forward to complete the project, which will triple the existing pipeline’s capacity and involve construction of 12 new pump stations, 19 new storage tanks and three new marine berths located at the Westridge Marine Terminal in the Burrard Inlet near Vancouver.

Federal officials said Thursday that the offer of financial assistance would extend to other companies if Kinder Morgan decides to walk away.

Conacher, a lawyer, academic and internationally recognized leader in the areas of democratic reform and government accountability, said it is up to the courts to decide what is in the national interest, based on the law and evidence.

“What is in the national interest is a question of law. And the government should not be taking steps to help a company do something that the government says is in the national interest until the Supreme Court of Canada has defined what that means.”

He said building the pipeline is unquestionably in the short-term interests of Alberta.

“But I don’t think the national interest is based on the short-term interest of one party in one province.”

The B.C. government announced this week that it will file its reference case on the ability of the province to regulate the transport of diluted bitumen in the Court of Appeal by April 30th, putting the much-debated constitutional question to the test.

The appropriate timeline for a final decision about whether or not to proceed with the Kinder Morgan pipeline should be the timing of a legal ruling, Conacher said, and not Kinder Morgan’s self-serving corporate deadline.

“If Kinder Morgan doesn’t like it then they can leave.”

Wudrick said other foreign corporations are watching the unfolding pipeline drama closely.

Canada needs to be a country that is welcoming to business, he said, adding that it is a very different matter and a “very expensive proposition” to subsidize businesses with public money.

“It will only attract the wrong kinds of business, the businesses that are interested in sucking money out of government rather than trying to make money in the marketplace. The fact that both the premier of Alberta and the prime minister have been so quick to offer of up taxpayers’ money sends a very dangerous signal.”

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Even if you live on Vancouver Island you’re not likely to have seen the elusive coastal wolves that populate its northernmost corners.

These genetically unique wolves, which are distinct from their land-locked cousins, live an atypical life for a grey wolf, living in remote estuaries and consuming a diet of mostly marine life.

There are an estimated 250 wolves on Vancouver Island, according to the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, the government ministry that is currently considering whether or not to expand the wolf trapping season in the province this spring.

The science behind the practice of culling wolves on Vancouver Island is being hotly contested by scientists and conservationists who say there’s very little evidence to support the province’s theory that wolves are responsible for a shrinking deer population.

The issue has been thrust into the public spotlight recently after a guide hunter who posted photos of Vancouver Island wolves in snares on social media offered a personal bounty for carcasses.

“Anecdotally, there has been an increase in wolf populations on northern Vancouver Island, particularly in the area around Port Hardy,” a spokesperson from the ministry told DeSmog Canada in an e-mailed statement.

“Biologists have also noticed increased wolf signs (tracks or sightings) in the area.”

That’s a far cry from hardcore evidence, Ian McAllister, executive director of Pacific Wild told DeSmog Canada.

In fact, there is no evidence that the unique coastal wolves on northern Vancouver Island kill large numbers of deer, he said. McAllister has been studying coastal wolves for over two decades.

“There’s absolutely no data or field-based research. There’s no peer-reviewed science to support this.”

Lack of science-based wildlife management across North America

An absence of data-driven decision-making in wildlife management isn’t unique to B.C.

Recent research published in the journal Science Advances found that across North America wildlife policies lacked basic scientific precepts.

Lead author Kyle Artelle, a biologist with Simon Fraser University and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, reviewed 667 management plans for 27 species that are hunted and trapped in Canada and the U.S.

“We highlighted four foundational hallmarks that would be required for a wildlife policy to be considered science-based: transparency, external scrutiny, clear objectives and evidence,” Artelle told DeSmog Canada.

Artelle and his team found that 60 per cent of wildlife management policies reviewed had fewer than half of those hallmarks. About half of the policies examined did not rely on population data.

“You’d be hard pressed to call any given activity science if it’s missing any of those pieces,” he said.

B.C. coastal wolves are often called a sea wolves for their ocean-rich diet which includes seals, sea lions, herring and salmon. Photo: Ian McAllister

Those indicators don’t even describe the scientific process completely, he said, “they’re just foundational non-negotiable requirements.”

An absence of adequate data, analysis and evidence doesn’t stop politicians from using science to defend and promote their policies, Artelle said.

Other scientists from Raincoast have published further research on this point, finding governments at time create “political populations” of large carnivores, which are managed to meet political rather than scientific ends.

“There’s a lot of power in that term — science. Which is why we need to be careful when it’s used to defend preferred policy options,” Artelle told DeSmog Canada.

“There’s a concern that politicians might use science to defend what they’re doing without having the actual evidence for justifying the activity.”

Artelle said wolf management in B.C. is a prime example of missing hallmarks of science.

On Vancouver Island, the province is pairing anecdotal information on declining deer populations with anecdotal evidence on increased wolf populations to justify hunting and trapping practices, he said.

“It doesn’t make biological sense that if a food source is crashing, the predator population would be increasing,” Artelle said, pointing to a study in southeast Alaska that found declining deer populations were the result of logging activities rather than wolf predation.

A similar occurrence may be happening on Vancouver Island where old-growth forest is increasingly being replaced by single-age stands rotated in timber harvests, he said.

The fight to save caribou

Habitat disturbance has been identified as a key driver of caribou decline. Both woodland and mountain caribou populations require large tracts of undisturbed habitat for survival.

On mainland B.C. and in Alberta, wolf culls are used to protect rapidly declining caribou populations although the practice is seen as controversial when not paired with aggressive habitat protections.

According to the ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Development, the South Selkirk, South Peace and North Columbia area caribou herds are in dire straits.

The province’s plan for those regions is to eliminate all wolves in an effort to protect caribou that remain.

“A minimum of 80 per cent of the wolves in the treatment area need to be removed and ideally all wolves will be taken,” the ministry said in a statement.

Around 250 wolves have been shot from helicopters over the last two years as part of the province’s wolf cull pilot project, which is in the fourth year of its project five-year lifespan.

The pilot project was pushed ahead even though the province’s 2014 wolf management policy acknowledged there is uncertainty killing wolves will help caribou.

“Attempts to control wolves to reduce predation risks on caribou has been a provincial priority since 2001. Wolf densities have been reduced: however, at this time, a correlation between reduced wolf densities and caribou recovery cannot be substantiated,” it says.

Caribou recovery is mandated from the federal government under the Species at Risk Act. According to a federal draft recovery plan for caribou, the provinces are responsible for protecting 65 per cent of caribou habitat from disturbance. In 2012 Ottawa directed the provinces to develop plans for that disturbance threshold by 2017. It was a deadline every single province missed.

Mark Hebblewhite, wildlife biology professor at the University of Montana, who served on the science panel for Canada’s boreal caribou recovery, said there is reasonable evidence that killing wolves buys time for threatened species like boreal woodland caribou in Alberta and the Yukon, but no evidence that wolf control has any lasting effects on deer populations.

“The real question about wolf control in the name of caribou conservation is what is being done about protecting critical habitat for caribou. And, in short, the answer in Alberta and the oil producing areas of B.C., is not enough,” Hebblewhite told DeSmog Canada.

Hebblewhite has compiled data on oil and gas activities in caribou habitat and has identified 19,000 wells drilled in caribou ranges in Alberta since 2004.

There is no point in killing wolves while simultaneously continuing to destroy caribou habitat with oil and gas exploration and industrial logging, he said.

Paul Paquet, Raincoast senior scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, also worries about the long-term effects of the war on wolves.

Wolves prey on caribou, as they always have, but the role played in the decline of caribou is a symptom, not the underlying cause, he said.

“Quite simply, people are the ultimate cause of caribou endangerment through the ongoing degradation imposed by our resource industries on caribou habitat,” he said

“As a result, caribou are on a long-term slide to extinction, not because of what wolves and other predators are doing, but because of what humans have already done.”

Artelle said governments should be more open with the public about the scientific uncertainties of killing wolves.

“Instead of science being used as a marketing ploy, we need clarity on ‘we’re going ahead with this approach because we don’t want to limit oil and gas production’ or ‘we don’t want to limit economic production.’ ”

The public deserves to be more fully informed about the main drivers of caribou decline, he said.

“It’s rarely honestly disclosed why the wolf cull is being pursued when we know wolves aren’t the main driver.”

Policy decisions are often made in the face of incomplete knowledge.

“Given the science will often be incomplete it’s important to be very clear with the public about uncertainties in the science, and how those decisions are being made knowing that science is imperfect.”

With files from Carol Linnitt.

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After more than a year of public hearings, the federal government unveiled its new and improved environmental assessment legislation in February 2018 with much ado.

But the new rules — designed to restore public trust in Canada’s process for reviewing major projects — didn’t contain any details on what kinds of projects would trigger a review under the new legislation.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna skirted the issue, saying her ministry was still evaluating what kinds of activities would show up on a yet-to-be-released “project list” that was pending further consultation with Canadians.

But when pressed on the issue, McKenna told reporters she didn’t believe oilsands projects developed via in-situ methods should be included. McKenna reasoned that because Alberta already has a hard cap on emissions, future oilsands projects would be exempt from federal environmental review.

The implications of excluding new oilsands projects because of a provincial emissions cap (which is controversial) weren’t lost on Adam Scott, senior advisor with Oil Change International.

Unbelievable and unacceptable. @cathmckenna proposes exempting #tarsands in-situ projects from any federal environmental assessment because ‘Alberta has a hard cap on emissions’ #cdnpoli

— Adam Scott (@AdamScottEnv) February 8, 2018

“It’s just appalling,” Scott told DeSmog Canada in an interview. “There’s no other way to say it.”

Unlike the more familiar open-pit mines of the Alberta oilsands, in-situ projects extract the region’s viscous bitumen by injecting steam into the ground, which softens the oil that is then pumped to the surface.

In-situ development represents the future of the oilsands. Between 2016 and 2040, in-situ is expected to double in daily production reaching 2.9 million barrels per day.

And while the process is less visible than its open-pit counterpart, in-situ oilsands mining has greater greenhouse gas emissions and significant land disturbance that clashes with the rights of local Indigenous peoples.

NDP MP Linda Duncan said by not releasing the project list the federal government has left everyone in the dark.

Duncan, who serves as vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development which is responsible for reviewing the new legislation, said in-situ projects were exempted from federal assessments under the previous Harper government during dramatic cuts to Canada’s environmental rules. The new proposed federal legislation, bill C-69, was meant to make the gutted rules more robust.

“Everybody agrees that this bill should not be finalized until everybody knows what the project list is,” Duncan told DeSmog Canada.

“Who is it going to apply to? It’s ridiculous that they didn’t have the consultations simultaneously. This is a really serious matter. One of the things that we heard from industry today was that they’re just fed up.”

In-situ projects expected to emit 65 megatonnes of emissions by 2030

In-situ projects don’t result in the same level of visual devastation as open-pit mining: there are no toxic tailings lakes or gargantuan trucks needed.

But they have their own set of significant impacts, which critics argue should fall under the purview of federal assessment.

For one, they emit far more greenhouse gases that mining on a per-barrel basis. A 2016 assessment by the Pembina Institute found the “emissions intensity” of in-situ is about 60 per cent higher than mining. That’s because natural gas is burned to create the steam used in the process, making it extremely emissions intensive.

By 2030, in-situ projects are expected to emit 65 megatonnes of emissions per year: almost equivalent to all passenger transport in the country.

Sharon Mascher, law professor at the University of Calgary and expert in environmental law, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that such climate impacts from in-situ projects warrant federal assessment.

“I would argue that the federal government has the constitutional power to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and they need to show some leadership if they’re going to purport to be acting in a way that’s consistent with their obligations under the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“They need to exercise that jurisdiction to make sure that over the long term Canada’s greenhouse gases are not increasing  but are decreasing and eventually reaching carbon neutrality.”

Alberta’s emissions cap allows for a 40 per cent expansion in emissions, up to 100 megatonnes. But that doesn’t include electricity cogeneration, oilsands that doens’t require steam extraction and new or expanded upgraders — which combine for another 15 megatonnes of emissions.

As noted in the recent collaborative report by Canada’s auditors general, Alberta is one of nine province and territories that doesn’t even have a 2030 emissions goal in place.

Mascher said the only way an exemption for new in-situ projects would make sense would be if the federal government conducted a strategic assessment of all existing legislative frameworks in order to provide assurance that new production fits within Paris Agreement obligations.

However, strategic assessments aren’t legislated — meaning they’re completely at the discretion of cabinet.

No environmental assessments for in-situ oilsands projects under the federal government’s new rules. @cathmckenna https://t.co/WjhonE2XgN

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 3, 2018

Without federal assessments, ‘there’s no credibility to the system at all’

Greenhouse gas emissions aren’t the only potential impact of in-situ projects.

As recently reported by DeSmog Canada, Fort McKay First Nation in northeast Alberta is currently fighting a proposed in-situ project that is feared to jeopardize a nearby sacred region.

Specific concerns include the introduction of linear disturbances like roads and cutlines — which can further endanger caribou — and constant water withdrawals.

“They’re massive water polluters with large impacts on land and endangered and threatened species like woodland caribou,” Scott said. “They obviously need to be part of any review. It’s just essential. Without that, there’s no credibility to the system at all. They need to be on the project list as a default.”

There’s growing interest by oilsands producers in the use of “solvents” for in-situ projects, which would greatly reduce the amount of natural gas required for extraction but have unknown impacts on groundwater quality.

Duncan emphasized it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to address Indigenous rights.  In addition, she emphasized that only the federal government can regulate navigable waters, fisheries and trans-boundary waters.

Even though the previous environmental impact system implemented under Harper exempted in-situ projects, Duncan said it’s imperative that they be included in the project list.

“It’s still having a huge impact on the landbase that is by and large traditional Indigenous lands,” she said.

Committee required to review legislation without knowing what it will apply to

The proposed legislation is currently being reviewed by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. After it’s approved, it’ll return to the House for third reading and eventually royal assent.

In late February, the Liberals introduction a “time allocation” motion over bill C-69 in the House of Commons, limiting debate to only two days before sending it off to the Liberal-stacked committee.

But Duncan said the committee process itself is also being fast-tracked, with limitations on hearing witnesses and proposed amendments.

In response, she gave notice of a motion to break up the bill for review and send sections to relevant committees: parts addressing the Canadian Energy Regulator to the Natural Resource committee and parts about navigable waters to the Transport committee.

Those calls were rebuffed.

Now, her committee has to review over 800 clauses by late April.

Some have speculated that the continued exemption for in-situ for Alberta is a subtle trick to ensure the emissions cap remains regardless of who wins the next provincial election.

Scott suggested that would be a “terrible strategy.”

“The Alberta cap is an ineffective way of dealing with climate impacts of oil and gas operations,” he said. “Exempting projects with the environmental impacts of in-situ tarsands projects really shows the impact system was broken entirely.”

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Early last spring, provincial civil servants cut off virtually all communication about what the government knew about a sprawling network of potentially dangerous and unregulated dams in northeast B.C. on the pretext they could not comment because of the impending election.

The coordinated effort meant there was virtually no comment until months after voting day from front-line agencies on how 92 unlicensed dams were built on the then BC Liberal government’s watch.

Details about muzzling government communication on the dams — which were built to trap freshwater used in natural gas industry fracking operations — are contained in some of the 8,000 pages of documents released by B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) in response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which was the first to report on the dams early last May.

The initial CCPA report, published one week before the election and widely covered by media outlets, exposed how fossil fuel companies had built “dozens” of unlicensed fracking dams.

The FOI documents include internal emails between senior OGC staff and the Ministry of Natural Gas Development, in which the two organizations agree to refuse to release information on the dams on the grounds that doing so would violate rules on managing government records during the “interregnum” (the time between governments).

But this assertion is flatly rejected by an expert on privacy policy.

“Guidelines on ‘managing records during an election’ cannot trump the law,” said Colin Bennett, a University of Victoria political scientist. “If there is a public interest in disclosure, then the election period is irrelevant.”

Bennett added that B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Act clearly states that government officials should proactively release information that is in the public interest without delay. That did not happen in this case.

Not only did it not happen, but the OGC insisted on formal FOI requests being filed to obtain the information. By doing so, the Commission — with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Natural Gas Development — ensured that documents on the troubling dams would not be released until long after the election.

The suppressed information included documents about unlicensed dams built by Progress Energy, a subsidiary of the giant Malaysian state-owned company Petronas. At the time of last spring’s election, Petronas was still weighing whether or not to invest in a proposed liquefied natural gas plant at the mouth of the Skeen River near Prince Rupert.

The project was enthusiastically backed by then-Premier Christy Clark and Minister of Natural Gas Development, Rich Coleman. The premier went so far as to call opponents of the project “the forces of no.”

Averting a potential disaster

Early in our investigation, the CCPA learned that at least one unauthorized Progress Energy dam was so poorly built that the OGC had quietly ordered the company in spring 2016 to dewater the dam’s reservoir in order to avert a potential disaster. (A gas compressor station was downhill of the dam.)

The OGC even posted a very short summary of the order on one of its webpages, a low-key public acknowledgement that a more comprehensive document existed. The CCPA’s request for a copy of the full order was initially denied.

An April 18, 2017 email exchange between the OGC’s executive director of corporate affairs, Graham Currie, and the Ministry of Natural Gas Development’s communications director, Paul Woolley, refers to the full order and related documents as materials that both organizations agree not to release or to answer questions about:

“FYI – spoke with [CCPA policy analyst] Ben Parfitt today and advised him we could not release the order he was asking for and that he should submit an FOI. He said he has to report on this – and will put a line in to the effect:

‘I asked to receive a copy of the order and Graham Currie told me, due to the interregnum, it was not available and I should submit an FOI.’

I suspect we’ll see his editorial coming in the next day or two, based on this conversation.”

A half hour later, Woolley responded saying:

“Thx. This is [sic] the lines we are working with:

• During the interregnum period, it is public service’s duty to remain impartial during this time both in action and perception.
• Government communication practices are the same as they have always been for this election which is to not offer media relations support beyond pointing to already publicly available data or information.
• There are exceptions to these practices which are immediate public health matters, environmental health and emergencies.
• Further, during this time government staff do not provide analysis or comment on campaign promises of any political party, or any general comments they may make about government programs, policies and services.

Release of the order would not be an immediate concern related to public health and safety or an emergency in my opinion.”

Vincent Gogolek, former executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said the email exchange is troubling, particularly in light of a complaint made by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre on behalf of the Association in 2012.

Gov failed to alert public to dam hazard in 2010

That complaint, to B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner, outlined several instances where the Association felt that government officials had acted incorrectly by withholding information that should have been released because it was clearly in the public interest.

One notable example was the government’s failure to notify the public about possible safety concerns at the small Testalinden dam in southern B.C. near the community of Oliver. A portion of the dam’s wall gave way in 2010, releasing 20,000 cubic metres of water.

Miraculously, no one was killed when the dam’s reservoir triggered a mudslide that wiped out five houses and blocked a portion of Highway 97 for five days.

After reviewing the law centre’s complaint, then-Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote a report in response in which she found that provincial civil servants knew from government inspection reports that the Testalinden dam was near the end of its lifespan and that it posed “a hazard.”

Denham concluded that the government “failed to meet its obligation” by not alerting the public to the “compromised state of the dam.”

Testalinden creek mudslide south of Oliver, B.C., 2010. Photo: Darren Kirby via Flickr

Denham was particularly concerned that when it came to the troubled dam, civil servants appeared to ignore one of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act’s most important provisions, Section 25, which stipulates that the head of any public body “must, without delay” disclose any information “about a risk of significant harm to the environment or to the health or safety of the public or a group of people.”

In light of Denham’s report, Gogolek wonders how the OGC and Ministry of Natural Gas Development concluded four years later that it was not in the public interest to proactively release information on the dozens of unauthorized earthen dams built by fossil fuel companies. Some of those earthen dams held back seven times more water than what escaped during the catastrophic Testalinden failure.

And in each case, those dams were not vetted by provincial dam safety officials before they were built, meaning it was anybody’s guess whether or not the structures were designed and built to even minimally acceptable engineering specifications.

“How did they interpret that these dams were so radically different than the Testalinden dam? That’s the critical question in my mind,” Gogolek said.

Gogolek’s concern has added significance in light of other documents released in response to the CCPA’s FOI requests. Those documents show that OGC personnel knew as far back as June 2015 that there was a significant problem at another unauthorized Progress Energy dam, yet the OGC took no significant action until May 2016.

And the commission remained virtually silent on the matter for almost another year until it was forced to respond because of the CCPA investigation.

‘I cannot determine the mode of failure’

The scant details on the June 2015 incident — a failure of some kind — at a Progress Energy dam site are contained in an “assessment report” written 11 months later (on May 26, 2016) by the OGC’s then-chief hydrologist Allan Chapman.

According to the assessment report, the chief hydrologist was not happy with what he found. Chapman discovered during his field visit that Progress had built the dam to capture freshwater from two streams.

Under provincial water laws, the company had to apply for a licence before diverting water from streams.

That had not happened.

The dam was 10 metres high and stored roughly five times more water than what spilled during the Testalinden disaster. That made the dam a fully regulated structure under provincial laws, meaning that before it was built engineering plans should have been submitted to provincial dam safety officials.

That didn’t happen either.

Then, in spring or early summer 2015 — Chapman was uncertain when — the dam experienced some kind of failure.

“I cannot determine the mode of failure,” Chapman wrote in his report, noting that the dam’s reservoir could possibly have overfilled and the water overtopped the structure.

“There is evidence of substantial water and sediment movement into the forest downslope of the dam,” Chapman wrote, noting that there were “mud and splash lines on trees” about one metre above ground level, and that those splash lines extended 100 metres or more into the forest “approximately 100 metres downslope” of the dam.

For any oil and gas industry workers in the immediate vicinity downhill of the dam that day, the mudflow could have had deadly consequences.

More than a year after Chapman’s visit, in response to questions emailed to Progress Energy by the CCPA, the company acknowledged that an event had, indeed, occurred at the site — but not a failure of the dam per se.

In the email, Progress’s vice-president of external affairs and communications, Liz Hannah, said that during construction of the dam “frozen material had been excavated from the pond area and stored in the northwest corner of the site. During melting conditions, a portion of this frozen saturated material had mobilized and run offsite onto a Progress right of way and into the adjacent forested crown land.”

Copies of photos included in Hannah’s email show a very large stream of dried and caked mud that she said had been carried away from the dam site.

“It is correct that a portion of the excavated soil pile failed,” Hannah concluded in her email, “but the dam itself did not.”

By the time of Chapman’s spring 2016 report, the OGC knew it had allowed a big problem to develop on its watch.

Progress Energy and other companies had clearly built many unlicensed dams on Crown or public lands — dams that the OGC could have, and should have, stopped. It was also clear that many more such dams had been built on private lands, dams that the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) also could, and should, have stopped.

At the time, provincial regulators didn’t know how many dams there were. They also didn’t know where the dams were located, what waters they impounded or how safe or unsafe they might be.

Scrambling to quantify just how many such dams there were, the OGC sent a letter on May 13, 2016 to companies drilling and fracking for gas in B.C.

The companies were instructed to report back on all “fresh water storage” structures they had built including information on dam heights, water sources, and the amounts of water stored behind the dams.

The letters also instructed the companies to supply “produced, signed and sealed” documents from professional engineers on the “structural integrity” of the dams. The companies were also told that their engineers must report on any “risk to public safety, the environment, or other property” that the dams posed.

Once the responses came in, the OGC concluded that Progress Energy had built roughly half of 51 unauthorized dams, all but three of which are located on Crown lands.

It is now up to the OGC to approve or disapprove the dams retroactively.

Progress Energy’s Lily dam is roughly as high as a five-storey building and was buit without government approval under the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act. Photo: Ben Parfitt

Evidence massive dam is ‘moving’

Subsequent work by FLRNO revealed that in addition to those 51 unregulated dams, another 41 were built without the required permits and that the bulk of those dams are on private lands, including farmlands in B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve.

Two unregulated dams built by Progress Energy in 2012 and 2014 are particularly problematic because they are so big. One is nearly 23 metres high or roughly as tall as a seven-storey apartment building and the other is roughly as high as a five-storey building. The taller of the two earthen structures is referred to in various documents as the “d-42-k” or Lily dam.

Both dams qualified as “reviewable projects” under B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act, meaning that each of them should have undergone separate provincial environmental assessments first to determine whether Progress would be allowed to build them at all.

But the company never alerted the Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) of its intentions to build the dams and Progress subsequently took the extraordinary step of asking the EAO after the fact to exempt the dams from review.

The EAO eventually ordered the company to drain virtually all of the water behind the massive structures and is expected to soon issue its decision on the company’s request. Several organizations, including the Blueberry River First Nation and the CCPA, filed documents with the EAO urging that the company’s application be rejected.

A photocopied photo included in the FOI documents obtained by the CCPA shows a tension crack at the top of one sloped wall of the towering Lily dam near Mile 156 of the Alaska Highway. The 23-metre-high structure’s “live storage” volume — meaning the amount of water that could be unleashed should the dam fail — is more than 20 million gallons or enough to fill 30 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Another email in the FOI package quotes an OGC official saying there was evidence the massive structure was “moving,” a sign that the dam’s earthen walls or berms were slowly shifting, potentially causing the dam to become unstable.

Since the first stories on the sprawling network of unauthorized dams were published by the CCPA on May 3, 2017, belated inspections by compliance and enforcement personnel with the OGC and EAO uncovered significant problems at 16 unlicensed dams on Crown lands. Companies were ordered to take corrective action, including draining much of the water behind many of the dams to lower the risk of catastrophic failures.

Further problems were identified at another dozen unlicensed dams built on Crown lands, for which the Province could still issue more orders. And, more problems may yet come to light at other unlicensed dams, in particular at the 41 built on private lands and recently identified by the FLNRO.

All of this makes the government’s pre-election strategy to suppress the release of information on the problematic dams more vexing. No environmental concerns? No risks to human health and safety? How did the government possibly draw such conclusions when documents in its possession clearly said otherwise?

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This piece originally appeared on Policy Note, by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The number of unlicensed and potentially dangerous dams built in recent years in northeast British Columbia is nearly double what has been reported, according to one of the province’s top water officials.

At least 92 unauthorized dams have been built in the region, where natural gas industry fracking operations consume more water than just about anywhere on earth. That’s far more than the 51 dams previously identified in documents obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

With the number of unlicensed dams built to impound freshwater used in fracking operations approaching 100, more questions are being raised about how so many structures were built without provincial agencies halting their construction.

Ted White, director and comptroller of water rights in B.C.’s Water Management Branch, confirmed the higher number, which includes an additional 41 dams to those originally documented by the CCPA, all built on private lands, most if not all, on rural farm lots in the provincial Agricultural Land Reserve.

White’s confirmation came after his ministry — the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRO) quietly posted a consultant’s report on its website early in the new year.

The report, posted without an accompanying press release, called some of the unauthorized dams potential “time bombs” and said a top priority must be “to find the high consequence dams and make sure they are properly constructed and operated and maintained in an appropriate manner before any of them fail.”

Jim Mattison, who wrote the report, was also once B.C.’s water comptroller.

Mattison based his conclusions on satellite imagery analyzed by FLRNO staff who looked at the vast network of artificial water bodies in the northeast where B.C.’s largest natural gas reserves are found. The analysis revealed nearly 8,000 water bodies have been constructed in the region, more than half of which are relatively small holes or “dugouts” in the ground that capture and store water used by farmers and/or natural gas companies.

Additionally, the report identified 268 “large” or “very large” artificial water bodies that could be dam reservoirs. These water bodies, all at least a half hectare in size and many much larger, became a top priority for further study.

After Mattison submitted a first draft of his report in March 2017, dam safety officials with FLNRO flew by helicopter to 80 suspected dams.

Those inspections, White said, identified 41 previously undocumented dams that were built without the proper licenses and authorizations. In an emailed response to questions, White said “the 41 dams identified by the Ministry are in addition to the 50 or so that the OGC [Oil and Gas Commission] had identified previously.”

In contrast to previous reports that identified dozens of unauthorized dams built on public lands, the recently identified 41 dams are all on private lands, including farmlands, White said, adding that “the Ministry and OGC have been working closely together to identify dams that require regulation.”

B.C. fracking consumes between 20 and 100 times more water than a decade ago

The unprecedented scale of problematic dams built in the region coincided with a rapid expansion in the amount of water that fossil fuel companies use in their fracking operations, particularly in the Montney Basin, the more southern of the two largest natural gas plays in northeast B.C.

According to a 2016 analysis by consulting firm Foundry Spatial, fracking operations in the region now consume between 20 and 100 times more water than they did just over a decade ago.

Around the time Mattison submitted his draft report last March, the CCPA received a tip that many unauthorized dams had been built by fossil fuel companies without the companies first obtaining required water licences or submitting engineering and construction plans to provincial dam safety officials.

The CCPA subsequently flew to Fort St. John, identified unlicensed dams in the field and published findings showing how “dozens” of such structures had been built in apparent violation of provincial acts and regulations including the Water Act, the Environmental Assessment Act and the provincial Dam Safety Regulation.

B.C. Oil and Gas Commission responsible for regulating problematic dams

FOI requests later confirmed that 51 such dams had been built. All but three were on Crown or public lands shared with First Nations.

B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), which regulates fossil fuel companies, is now responsible for regulating those dams.

Nearly one third of the dams first identified as unauthorized were later found to have structural problems that posed serious enough risks to human health and safety and the environment that the companies were ordered to take corrective actions.

Among the most significant design flaws were dams built without spillways, which are essential to divert water safely away from dam reservoirs in the event that reservoirs overfill. Without spillways, dams are at heightened risk of catastrophic failures.

The 41 dams on private land are FLNRO’s responsibility to regulate not than the OGC’s, and White said dams on private lands are nevertheless subject to the same laws and regulations as those on public lands.

Once dams exceed a certain height and/or impound enough water, they become regulated structures. The 41 identified dams on private lands and the 51 on Crown lands meet the criteria for regulated dams.

The story of one of the dams on private land sheds light on the challenges ahead for FLNRO’s dam safety and water officials.

The frack water gambit on private lands

Old Faithful Water Inc. is an offshoot of Swamp Donkey Oilfield Services, a Dawson Creek-based company owned by Trent Lindberg. The company is in the business of selling water to natural gas industry clients.

Like the famed geyser that spews forth water with regularity in distant Yellowstone Park and that the company named itself after, Old Faithful’s owners boast on the company’s website that they can sell water to the fracking industry winter, spring, summer and fall. Each of the company’s four “all season” facilities in the Peace River region straddle the B.C.-Alberta border and are near major hauling routes like the Alaska Highway.

Each facility has ample room for incoming trucks to hook up to pumps that can fill the average tanker with 32 cubic metres of water in just eight minutes. Then the trucks can rumble off to nearby gas drilling pads where the water is pumped underground during some of the most water-intense methane gas industry fracking operations on earth.

Much of that information is on the Dawson Creek company’s website, which features a somewhat bucolic photograph of grasses and flowers in front of what appears to be a small lake except the lake’s far banks look like they’ve been bulldozed into place.

“When it comes to easy water,” Old Faithful’s website gushes, “we have it for you.”

But the “easy water” story has an edgier, uneasy narrative.

A large, earthen dam operated by Old Faithful on private lands. Photo: Vicky Husband

At least some of what the company sells to its industry clients comes from a reservoir impounded by a large earthen dam on private land owned by Trent and Twyla Lindberg. (The Lindbergs could not be reached for comment.)

According to a document filed with the Peace River Regional District, when the dam’s reservoir is at “full capacity” the impounded water is six metres “above grade.” In other words, a wall of water roughly as high as a two-storey house is at risk of spilling in the event the dam failed.

The company built the dam in violation of key provincial regulations, including obtaining a water licence before building the dam. According to documents filed with the Peace River Regional District by a surveyor working for the company, the dam was built in mid-2013, long before the provincial government issued the water licence.

Old Faithful’s dam and reservoir are also on farmland in B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve, land that can no longer produce crops because it is either covered by the dam and reservoir, or by the road leading to and from the facility, or the by the large clearing constructed for the tanks and pumps used to fill the incoming trucks with their frack water.

And the water used to fill the unlicensed dam’s reservoir was pumped without permission from nearby Six Mile Creek. The surveyor’s report incorrectly claims that the creek is a “non-fish-bearing” stream when in fact the creek is home to spawning and rearing fish.

‘It’s the Wild West up here’

Last April — four years after the unlicensed dam was built — FLRNO retroactively issued Old Faithful’s owners a water licence, allowing the dam to continue operation. White said the government elected not to fine or charge the company for violating the rules.

“When instances of non-compliance are discovered related to a dam, the goal of the Ministry is to bring owners into compliance with the WSA and its regulations through application of the Dam Safety Compliance and Enforcement Policy. By applying for and being granted a water licence, the owner is demonstrating progress toward coming fully into compliance with the WSA and regulations,” White said in an emailed response to questions.

“There are currently no outstanding orders or fines related to this file.”

The lack of fines for building a dam without the required pre-approvals does not surprise Arthur Hadland, a longtime area resident, farmer and former elected director for the Peace River Regional District.

“It’s the Wild West up here,” says Hadland, who while a regional district director between 2008 and 2014 represented about 7,000 rural residents living in the outlying region around Fort St. John.

“There’s no sense of stewardship anymore,” Hadland laments. “We’ve lost that.”

Most people living in the region may have never heard of Old Faithful Water Inc.

Shell Canada, a subsidiary of the global fossil fuel behemoth Royal Dutch Shell, is another matter. The company’s sign can be seen at Shell gas stations in just about every community in the province and the company also has subsurface rights to oil and gas over an area totalling more than 88,200 hectares in northeast B.C.

In 2016, Shell had drilling rights on an even greater area of land before selling those rights on nearly 24,700 hectares to Tourmaline Oil Corporation as part of a $1.03 billion cash and stock transaction. The subsurface rights that Shell sold were in the Gundy area (generally north of Fort St. John) and included farmland where Shell, like Old Faithful, had a role in constructing two dams that violated key provincial laws.

Documents obtained by the CCPA through FOI requests filed with the OGC indicate that Commission personnel were aware of the two Shell dams that contravened key pieces of provincial legislation.

‘Long saga’ with dams: hydrologist

In an October 2016 email with the subject line “Shell Canada – Gundy – dams,” the issue of the two dams is addressed by Allan Chapman, the OGC’s then chief hydrologist, in a note to numerous FLNRO personnel.

Chapman notes that Shell had recently retroactively applied for water licences for two dams “and related stream diversions” on a rural property north of Fort St. John. He went on to write in the email that because Shell subsequently sold its leases, it was expected the company would withdraw its water licence applications and leave it to the new lease owner to come into compliance with all relevant provincial laws.

“There is a long saga with these dams and stream diversion. Everything was done 3-4 years ago without authorization,” Chapman wrote.

FOI documents also reveal that both dams are located on a “district lot” within B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve.

A provincial land title search shows the property – District Lot 2615 – is in the Peace River District and owned by Joleen Meservy whose mailing address is listed in La Glace, Alberta. On her Linkedin page Messervy describes herself as an owner and manager of the Bar 4A Cattle Company and as a “civil consultant” for Meservy Holdings Ltd. The word Shell and the corporation’s distinct bright yellow seashell logo outlined in red is prominently displayed beside the Meservy Holdings name.

According to the land title document, Shell holds three registered leases on the Meservy property. The document does not indicate how much Meservy paid to purchase the property, or how much she may have received from Shell in return either as a one-time up-front payment or through annual lease payments, or what arrangements may have been made between the Shell consultant and the company to access the land and take water away.

Meservey could not be reached for comment.

One of the Shell dams is identified in the document as “Water Pit #3” and was built in the middle of a wetland on the property. B.C.’s Ministry of Environment notes that wetland losses have accelerated in many parts of the province, that they are “one of the most important life support systems on earth,” and that they provide “critical habitat” for fish, birds and other wildlife, including threatened and endangered species.

There is no information in the documents about whether the two dams were built to an acceptable engineering standard.

In an emailed response to questions, Graham Currie, the OGC’s director of public and corporate relations, said the OGC “intends to issue and enforce” orders at the dams and that the Commission holds Shell responsible for the structures.

Like the dams built on public land, those on private land were all built for one express purpose: to supply water to natural gas companies for use in their hydraulic fracturing or fracking operations.

Western Canadian shale plays. Source: Rystad Energy

Accelerating gas production means more water use

While prospects appear dim for a much-hyped liquefied natural gas industry in B.C., natural gas drilling and fracking operations are intensifying in the Montney region, thanks to an abundance of naturally occurring liquids or “wet gases” that flow to the surface following fracking operations. The liquids include pentane, butane and condensates, prized commodities in the Alberta tar sands.

High-volume fracking — a process where immense volumes of water are pressure-pumped deep underground to create cracks or fractures in gas-bearing rock — is now essential to coax gas liquids and methane gas to the surface because the best, easiest to access gas resources are long gone.

Methane — a gas, not a liquid — was long the mainstay of B.C.’s oil and gas industry.

But with gas prices remaining stubbornly low, profits in the Montney now derive almost entirely from naturally occurring “wet” gases that flow to the surface along with the gas following fracking.

The drive to coax as many wet gases from the ground as possible has triggered a sharp increase in the amount of water used at fracking operations.

Encana, one of the region’s largest holders of wet gas deposits, predicts it will double its methane gas production in the Montney by 2019 while at the same time its gas liquids output will soar fivefold to reach 70,000 barrels per day.

That accelerating production means a need for more and more water.

In August 2015, a Progress Energy fracking operation in the Montney Basin consumed 160,000 cubic metres of water — the equivalent of 64 Olympic swimming pools — at just one well, according to award-winning investigative reporter and author Andrew Nikiforuk.

The fracking operation triggered a 4.6 magnitude earthquake, a tremor far more powerful than the two 2.7 magnitude earthquakes that may have contributed to the recent failure of a tailings pond dam at an Australian gold mine in New South Wales.

The water pumped during the Progress Energy fracking operation was eight times more than the amount used in an average fracking procedure in the continental United States.

Small dam failure destroyed 5 houses in 2010

Just as the OGC must now rule retroactively on whether companies that built dozens of dams without permits on Crown lands should be allowed to continue to operate those facilities, it now falls to FLNRO personnel to decide the fate of at least 41 frack-water dams built on private land.

The dams in question are tiny compared to the region’s nearby hydroelectric dams or to larger tailings pond dams operated by mining companies, however, the Mattison report is clear that plenty of damage could occur in the event one of the unlicensed fracking dams were to fail.

Some fracking dams dwarf other earthen structures that have given way in other parts of the province causing great damage, Mattison said.

“Testalinden Lake was a small reservoir in the Okanagan holding about 55,000 m3 of water, artificially created by a small dam less than 10 m high. In mid June 2010, the dam failed. Only about 20,000 m3 of water escaped and ran down a gully for 8 km, by which time it was a debris flow of about 200,000 m3. It destroyed five houses, blocked Highway 97 for five days, covered a four hectare orchard and a vineyard with one and a half metres of mud, and resulted in nine million in damages. Fortunately, there was no loss of life,” Mattison noted.

FOI documents reveal that some of the unauthorized fracking dams impound 150,000 cubic metres of water, roughly three times what the Testalinden dam held back.

The potential damage from the failure of even modest dams is one reason why the penalties for building dams without permits can be significant. If charged and convicted for violating the Water Sustainability Act or B.C.’s Dam Safety Regulation, fines can run to $200,000 and in the most extreme cases $1 million.

The worst offences can also result in jail terms.

To date, however, neither the OGC nor FLNRO have laid charges against any companies for violating provincial laws by building unlicensed fracking dams. Instead, government has taken the softer approach of coaxing companies to “come into compliance” after-the-fact.

Time will tell whether or not that approach safeguards the public interest and proves a sufficient deterrent.

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The language and culture of the Upper Nicola Band honour the natural laws of the tmixw — “that which gives us life.” One tmixw is the sun, which shines for more than 2,000 hours annually in much of the band’s traditional territory in B.C.’s arid Okanagan region.

Plans are afoot to harness the sun’s power to build B.C.’s largest solar farm on the band’s Quilchena reserve, a project that would create enough energy for 5,000 homes and deliver up to $4 million in annual revenues to the First Nation community.

The farm would be 15 times the size of Kimberly’s SunMine solar installation on the site of a former hard-rock mine, currently the largest solar project in the province.

“We wanted to showcase something positive for the environment,” Chief Harvey McLeod told DeSmog Canada.

“Our members will go by and see this and know we are contributing to a cleaner, greener planet. We’re not destroying anything; we’re using the resources given to us by the Creator.”

Solar has been slow to take off in B.C., even though the province receives more annual sunshine than Germany, a country at the forefront of the global solar revolution.

B.C. homeowners can install solar panels through BC Hydro’s little-known net metering program, but solar farms are almost non-existent in the province at a time when they are proliferating around the world, including in countries like the United Kingdom, not typically known for its sunny days.

The U.K. now has almost 12,000 megawatts of installed solar capacity, the majority from solar farms. By comparison, B.C. has a total generating capacity of about 16,000 megawatts, mostly from large dams.

Jae Mather, executive director of Clean Energy BC, said the price of solar has plummeted by almost 20 per cent in the past year alone.

Typical rooftop solar installations on European warehouses are each capable of generating one megawatt of power, and solar farms can produce far more electricity, Mather said in an interview.

“If you compare it [the Upper Nicola solar farm] to the world it’s actually not that big at all.”

“Hundreds and hundreds of megawatts of solar farms are going up in Ontario right now. It’s big for B.C. but still quite small for the world.”

Mather said investors are keen to build solar farms in B.C., but it’s virtually impossible right now to get a commitment from BC Hydro to buy the electricity.

“Until you get an Energy Purchase Agreement (EPA) nothing really matters when it comes to energy.”

“You can have every permit in the world, have huge amounts of money spent, have every tick on every box, but until the EPA is issued nothing matters.”

Negotiations over transmission line revolved around clean energy project

The story of how the Upper Nicola Band managed to leverage an EPA for its precedent-setting solar farm began almost 10 years ago, when BC Hydro approached the band and said it wanted to twin a major transmission line — the Interior to Lower Mainland transmission line — through its traditional territory.

Prolonged negotiations ensued, and the First Nation said it would consent to the line on a major condition.

The band wanted to develop a “clean and green” power project and BC Hydro had to agree to buy the power — not a straightforward proposition considering that B.C. has a power surplus, demand has been flat for more than a decade despite a population surge and a decision to proceed with the $10.7 billion Site C dam has chased some renewable energy projects out of the province.

“We had a lot of negotiations,” the chief recalled. “And part of the compensation was a 15 megawatt project. We included that as one of the terms.”

“We see it as really beneficial for us to get engaged in clean energy. This was one of our priorities. It had to be clean, green energy. And we had some alternatives. We looked at geothermal, we looked at wind and we eventually settled on solar.”

A solar installation could be built on reserve land, for everybody to see, and for the band to own and control, said Chief McLeod.

But before the Upper Nicola Band could build a power project, it had to find the right business partner. In August 2016, the band selected Fortis, a company many British Columbians associate with natural gas.

Fortis is also a leading electricity provider, with more than 80 per cent of its $48 billion of Canadian and U.S. assets in the electricity sector. One Fortis company owns Tucson Electric Power, which has extensive experience in solar installations.

Grant Bierlmeier, business development director for Fortis, described the company’s relationship with the Upper Nicola Band as a “great complementary partnership.”

“They bring the land, they bring the EPA [Energy Purchase Agreement], they bring some labour, and we bring expertise on the solar technology itself and a long-term interest in ownership,” he said in an interview. “We’re all very excited.”

Bierlmeier pointed out that the Upper Nicola Band solar project is moving forward even though the independent power industry “is having challenges getting contracts to sell power to BC Hydro,” largely due to an electricity glut.

“The short answer is no, BC Hydro doesn’t need the power from this particular project,” said Bierlmeier.

“The bigger answer and the more complete answer is ‘yes, they need the power.’ The cost of getting [power] from northeast B.C. to the Lower Mainland is to do this accommodation with the Upper Nicola…to buy power from a renewable project of their selection.”

“So it’s the cost of the Interior to Lower Mainland transmission line.”

The twinning of the transmission line took place as the former BC Liberal government forged ahead with plans to build the Site C dam on the Peace River, and also made plans to shut down Burrard Thermal, a natural gas-fired plant in Port Moody that was on standby to provide electricity to the Lower Mainland.

‘We have to move into the future’

The new $743 million line transmits power from large dams on the Columbia and Peace rivers. It crosses mountains, grasslands, major rivers and highways, and runs “right through the middle of our territory to Vancouver,” explained Chief McLeod.

He said the Upper Nicola Band is now deeply engaged in discussions with the province about putting solar panels on band buildings and homes and investing in wind and geothermal energy, in addition to the solar farm.

The chief sees benefits from clean energy projects aside from revenue, including training opportunities and renewable energy careers for some of his people, instead of shorter-term jobs in the boom and bust resource sector.

“We have to move into the future,” explained Chief McLeod.

“Water is getting more scarce, there’s going to be less of it. We have to look at alternatives [to hydro] and at the same time protect our environment.”

Earlier this month, BC Hydro announced plans to “pursue negotiations” for electricity purchase agreements with five “small and micro” renewable energy projects led by First Nations, including a one megawatt solar power project led by Tsilhqot’in National Government near Hanceville.

Energy Minister Michelle Mungall said in a press release that, “moving forward with the development of these energy projects is a step in the right direction in creating opportunities for First Nations in the province, while also contributing to B.C.’s clean energy future.”

Mather said Clean Energy BC is happy the First Nations-led projects are progressing.

“It’s wonderful for everyone involved. It’s really important for reconciliation, for local economic development and for more clean energy in the marketplace.”

But he said the “rest of the queue” for clean energy projects in B.C. is “not moving forward.”

Upper Nicola Band members will vote in April on whether to set aside 400 hectares of their Quilchena reserve for economic development projects, half of which would be allocated for the solar farm.

Pending approval from band members, a solar farm final investment decision will be made by the end of the year, and construction will take four to six months.

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BC Hydro is the utility that keeps the lights on in B.C. and generally it does a fine job of restoring wind-toppled power lines and firing up our smart phones and flat screens.

What isn’t going so well for the Crown corporation are its finances, which Energy Minister Michelle Mungall calls a “mess” and project finance expert Eoin Finn says are in the worst shape of any other public or private utility in North America.

Yet the NDP government has retained most of BC Hydro’s board of directors appointed by the previous BC Liberal administration — board members who were responsible for fiduciary oversight while the mess was gathering momentum — which raises troubling questions about the government’s readiness to fix problems at the deeply indebted utility.

And instead of implementing far stricter rules to avoid the perceived conflicts of interest that dogged the BC Hydro board during the BC Liberal era, most of the NDP’s recent appointees to the board have a strong connection to Site C dam project and other BC Hydro contracts, or to large mining and energy projects proposed for the province — a trend that government accountability experts call disturbing.

“If you are a publicly traded company and somebody credible comes along and says your finances are a mess, and the public accepted that your finances were a mess, the board would be dismissed,” said Dermod Travis, executive director of Integrity BC, a non-partisan political watchdog group. “And likely the entire executive team would be dismissed as well.”

Travis said while there is no doubt that BC Hydro board members have many professional qualifications, the NDP government “has left itself deeply exposed for a set-up by leaving this board in the hands of the BC Liberal party, which is effectively what they’ve done.”

“I think it’s going to be a recipe for stalemate or disaster.”

The NDP did fire BC Hydro board chair Brad Bennett, an advisor to former Premier Christy Clark who spent two election campaigns travelling on Clark’s bus and who, while he was BC Hydro chair, nominated Clark to run for re-election for the Liberals in the riding of West Kelowna.

And they gave the boot to board member Jack Weisgerber, a former Liberal MLA who was former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s energy minister and who worked as a BC Hydro consultant on the Site C dam from 2007 to 2014.

But six BC Hydro board members appointed by the BC Liberals remain, and five are donors to the BC Liberals, according to a search of B.C.’s political donations database.*

“There is no-one on that board today that would make me feel comfortable [about] a new direction,” Travis told DeSmog Canada.

“It’s a full steam ahead board. When you have a minister saying that BC Hydro’s a mess, the last person you should leave in charge, to make an analogy, is to leave the arsonist to put out the fire.”

Who are BC Hydro’s new board members?

Professional engineer John Nunn is one of the new board members appointed by the NDP in January. Nunn’s board bio on BC Hydro’s website describes him as an “engineer with over 40 years of Canadian and international experience in hydroelectric and water storage projects.”

What the bio doesn’t say is that Nunn was the chief project engineer for the Site C dam on B.C.’s Peace River, working for the engineering and consulting firm Klohn Crippen Berger, a Vancouver-based company that currently holds a contract, along with SNC Lavalin, for “design services” on the Site C dam project, according to BC Hydro.

Klohn Crippen donated almost $30,000 to the BC Liberal party between 2005 and 2016 (compared to zero dollars to the B.C. NDP).

According to Klohn Crippen Berger’s website, the company has provided “comprehensive engineering and support service since the earliest days of the Site C project.”

These include a 2005 assessment of design issues that “could affect the project cost” — then pegged at about $2 billion — and comprehensive engineering and consulting work services from 2009 to 2014, such as an acid rock drainage and metal leachate management plan.

Jim Brander, a professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business who focuses on Crown corporations, said there is a clear conflict of interest if companies that employ BC Hydro board members — or companies that used to employ board members — are awarded new BC Hydro contracts.

“It would look very suspicious if these new board members were there and new contracts were awarded to their old companies,” Brander said in an interview. “That’s an obvious conflict.”

Brander also said it is not unusual for new governments to leave crown corporation board members in place and that generally there is not a lot of turnover on these boards following the installation of a new government.

But he expressed concern that companies that donated to the BC Liberals — Klohn Crippen Berger, for example — received Site C dam and other BC Hydro contracts, saying “I don’t like the scenario of making donations and getting contracts.”

Vancouver attorney Christopher Sanderson was also appointed to the BC Hydro board in January.

Sanderson is a utility regulatory lawyer who has worked for BC Hydro on a “number of regulatory and judicial proceedings involving the extent of the Crown’s obligation to consult First Nations.”

That’s according to the website of Sanderson’s law firm Lawson Lundell, a company that donated $31,500 to the BC Liberals between 2005 and 2017 (there is no record of any donations to the NDP.)

Lawson Lundell currently represents BC Hydro in B.C. Utilities Commission hearings into BC Hydro’s $1.2 billion purchase of the Waneta Dam and generating station in Trail from coal giant Teck Resources Ltd. The Waneta Dam produces slightly less than one-half of the power that Site C would generate.

Sanderson has also represented the corporation Woodfibre LNG, which plans to build a liquefied natural gas processing and export facility near Squamish.

Notably, Woodfibre announced that it would proceed with the project on the same day that the former BC Liberal government made public its new eDrive electricity rate, offering a significantly lower power price to LNG projects that use hydro instead of natural gas.

BC Hydro’s website notes that it has been asked to supply power to Woodfibre LNG.

Woodfibre donated a total of $63,750 to the NDP between 2014 and 2017 and a total of $98,000 to the BC Liberal party between 2015 and 2017.

“If you have even the appearance of conflict of interest you should be disqualified [from the board of a Crown corporation],” said Duff Connacher, a founder of the civic organization Democracy Watch.

“If you don’t have strong conflict of interest and appointment laws you don’t have democracy,” said Connacher, a lawyer, academic and internationally recognized leader in the areas of democratic reform and government accountability.

A third BC Hydro board member appointed by the NDP in January, Robert Gallagher, is the retired CEO for New Gold, a company that donated $28,500 to the BC Liberal party between 2006 and 2011. New Gold donated $3,050 to the NDP from 2012 to 2013.

A New Gold project in B.C., the proposed Blackwater Gold mine in the Nechako Plateau southwest of Prince George, is currently under consideration by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office.

“There’s something about a publicly traded company that seems to be entirely lost on the boards of public agencies and crown corporations in British Columbia,” Travis said.

“And that is the independent director, the person who has no attachment to anyone or anything who sits on that board of directors. The problem that you have with this particular board, even with the new appointees, is that you have cheerleaders. You don’t have devil’s advocates.”

“I think it’s going to be a recipe for stalemate or disaster.” https://t.co/fiA0waXpK1

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 19, 2018

Still no BC Hydro CEO

The NDP also maintained the status quo at BC Hydro when it promoted Chris O’Riley, the utility’s vice-president and a long-time hydro employee who helped shepherd the Site C dam project, to the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO) last summer.

Last August 30, O’Riley told the watchdog B.C. Utilities Commission that Site C was “on time and on budget.”

Yet, only three months later, it was revealed that the project had fallen behind schedule and had climbed $2 billion over budget, prompting former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen to assert in an affidavit that BC Hydro executives had mismanaged the Site C dam’s budget and cost control process and that they are “not capable” of accurate estimates or controlling costs.

The NDP has not filled BC Hydro’s CEO position since it dismissed Jessica McDonald, former Liberal premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy premier and head of the B.C. public service (McDonald’s ex-husband Mark McDonald ran former Liberal premier Christy Clark’s election campaigns.)**

Brander said it is “a bit strange” and “a little surprising” that BC Hydro does not have a CEO. The successful business model, he said, is that a COO reports to a CEO.

Premier John Horgan, asked by DeSmog Canada about the lack of a BC Hydro CEO, said at a media briefing last week that he has “confidence” in O’Riley and that it is up to BC Hydro’s board to make a decision about the CEO position.

For now at least, the NDP has created a new BC Hydro board position called an Executive Chair, appointing Ken Peterson, a electricity industry veteran, to the role. Peterson is the former CEO of Powerex, the marketing and trading subsidiary of BC Hydro.

Powerex was one of dozens of electricity trading companies accused of selling power to California at inflated prices in 2000 and 2001 during summers of electricity shortages. The subsidiary settled a lawsuit in 2013, paying US $273 million in cash to California and offering state electric utilities $477 million in credit.

(A Ken Peterson is listed on the B.C. political contributions registry as having donated a total of $3,500 to Premier John Horgan’s nomination and leadership campaigns in 2004 and 2011, although, in the absence of full disclosure, it may not be the same Ken Peterson.)

NDP recently re-appointed BC Liberal board member

Horgan told DeSmog Canada at the same media briefing that Peterson is “taking stock of the [BC Hydro] executive, he’s taking stock of the board members. And we’re going to be replacing board members as their terms expire.”

Yet only three months ago, the NDP re-appointed John Ritchie to the BC Hydro board when his term was up.

Ritchie, a civil engineer who was installed on the Hydro board by the BC Liberals, is a former senior consultant for Hatch, an engineering and consulting firm that BC Hydro hired to work on Site C.

Together with Klohn Crippen Berger, Hatch holds a long-term contract with BC Hydro to work on dam safety projects that “may include dams and spillways,” according to an announcement of the agreement on Klohn Crippen Berger’s website. The agreement is valid until 2024, the year that Site C will become operational.

Like the five other board members retained from the Liberal era, Ritchie sat on BC Hydro’s board while the price of Site C climbed from $8.8 billion in 2016 to $10.7 billion in 2017.

Hatch donated $10,000 to the BC Liberals in 2009, the year before Campbell announced that his government would proceed with the Site C dam. There is no record of any donations to the NDP.

And when Hatch was part of a larger firm called Hatch, Mott MacDonald, it also donated just over $4,000 to the BC Liberals between 2007 and 2011, along with $1,600 to NDP candidate Gabriel Yiu in 2013.

Connacher said B.C. is in urgent need of a fully independent appointments commission comprised of people outside government that are chosen by all political parties with seats in the legislature.

“They should be required to do a public, merit-based search for nominees for appointments,” he told DeSmog Canada.

Travis agreed that board appointments should be reviewed by all political parties, noting that it can save money for taxpayers because after a change in government “you won’t have to be firing as many people as we do now.”

Boards need people who aren’t afraid to hit the pause button to avoid boondoggles, he said.

“We need people who can look at government and say, ‘that might make for good politics, but it’s lousy business and I’m not supporting it.’ ”

*Updated at 9:40 p.m. on March 19, 2018: The story originally stated that three of the remaining six BC Hydro board members appointed by the BC Liberals are donors to the BC Liberals, but further research has indicated that five of six are actually donors to the BC Liberals.*

** Updated at 10:42 a.m. on March 20, 2018: This story has been updated to reflect that Mike McDonald, not Mike Marrisen as previously stated, is Jessica McDonald’s ex-husband and worked on Christy Clark’s election campaigns.*

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.

Underneath the picturesque Salish Sea there are churning currents, with water swooshing in from the open ocean and surges of nutrient-rich fresh water from creeks and rivers that alter the sea’s chemistry — and can make life tough for species trying to survive in a rapidly changing environment.

And that’s why scientists are increasingly interested in the Salish Sea as they study ocean acidification — often called the evil twin of climate change.

The impacts of ocean acidification range from coral reef bleaching in the Caribbean and South Pacific to the hardships faced by oyster and mussel aquaculture businesses in the Salish Sea because shellfish are unable to form calcium carbonate shells.

The Salish Sea is a network of coastal waterways that includes the Strait of Georgia, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Researchers are interested in the differences between the semi-enclosed body of water near Vancouver and Seattle and the more exposed outer coast.

“We are a bit of a canary in a coal mine,” said Jay Manning, chair of the leadership council for the Puget Sound Partnership, a group charged with restoring the health of Puget Sound.

‘Stuck with acidic oceans for thousands of years’

The basic science of ocean acidification is simple — the ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which reacts with sea water and creates a weak carbonic acid.

In the Pacific Ocean, deep acidic water circulates for years and then surfaces in upwellings along the West Coast.

It isn’t a problem that is going to correct itself, even if humanity swears off fossil fuels tomorrow and, as oceans cover 71 per cent of the world’s surface and house 80 per cent of our biodiversity, acidification could disrupt food supplies and destroy coastal communities.

More than 80 per cent of the heat generated by climate change and about 30 per cent of carbon dioxide released by human activities since the start of the Industrial Revolution has been absorbed by the ocean.

“We are going to be stuck with acidic oceans for thousands of years, if not for millenia,” Kim Juniper, a University of Victoria professor who holds the  B.C. leadership chair in marine ecosystems and global change told DeSmog Canada.

An eight-year study by 250 scientists found that, even if global warming is held to no more than two degrees, there will be irreparable damage.

That means winners and losers, with shellfish and small creatures such as pteropods — a tiny sea snail that serves as food for salmon and other fish — on the losing end and jellyfish and sea grasses among organisms that could thrive.

“We are a bit of a canary in a coal mine.” https://t.co/BkDeudGP9W

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 12, 2018

‘Is there time to adapt?’

On the West Coast, ocean acidification sprung to public consciousness more than a decade ago when exceptionally low pH levels — meaning the water was more more acidic than usual — killed 100 per cent of young oysters at two major hatcheries in Washington State.

“That got everyone’s attention on the West Coast. A lot of jobs were at stake and it went from being an interesting thing to talk about in the classroom to something we had to take action on,” Manning said.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said categorically that “the ocean has had enough” as he announced a Blue Ribbon Panel to study ways to cope with the new reality. Meanwhile, scientists, politicians and non-governmental agencies from California, Oregon, Washington and B.C. started working together to look for information and solutions.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada research scientist Debby Ianson is one of the few researchers looking at ocean acidification in the Salish Sea and has found that areas such as the Strait of Georgia are naturally more acidic than the surrounding ocean and upwelling water from the outer coast increases pH levels in the Salish Sea, making the water less acidic.

“The question is whether the Salish Sea has always been this acidic and what makes it this acidic,” Ianson said.

And, as the water becomes more acidic, is there time for some of the organisms to be able to adapt to the increasingly corrosive water?

Researchers have already found that indigenous oysters do better in low pH waters than the larger Pacific oyster, which has been used by shellfish farmers for decades, said Susan Allen oceanographer and professor at the University of B.C. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

“Maybe we can develop strains that do better under these new conditions,” Allen said.

“By understanding the system and the impacts maybe we can mitigate and adapt,” she said.

Much of the research is in its infancy, and Ianson said that even the decline of pteropods in the Pacific Ocean may not be directly attributable to ocean acidification.

“They have been around for thousands or millions of years. They were around even when there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than now,” she said.

A study published last year in Nature found colonies of marine snails thriving in seawater that was 30 times more acidic than normal, a discovery that suggests some animals are able to adapt to ocean acidification.

Climate change raises ongoing questions

But, as the impacts of climate change increase, there is also the question of which creatures will be able to withstand the multiple stressors of increasing temperatures and decreasing oxygen, Ianson said.

One key to understanding what is happening in the water that surrounds us is to gather the essential baseline information. Sensors that measure pH levels are being installed at stations along the Ocean Networks Canada observatory system and on B.C. Ferries.

Jim Christian, research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Victoria, recently led an international workshop on gathering data to measure ocean acidification.

They are not easy measurements to make and autonomous sensors make more sense than having researchers take bottle samples, he said.

“These sensors are new and to some degree they are untested. There’s a lot of potential there… but it’s a long, slow process of getting the sensors in place and then we have to make sure the data are reliable,” he told DeSmog Canada.

The lack of historical data and the variability of acidity in the Salish Sea makes the task challenging, Christian said.

The Salish Sea saturation state in the surface water is low, meaning it is naturally acidic in the winter, with the summertime plankton bloom taking up carbon dioxide making it easier for shellfish to produce shells, Christian said.

“That may mean that the organisms that live there are well adapted to an environment that is naturally acidic or it may mean that it’s relatively close to a threshold that could be really bad for those organisms,” he said.

“What we do know is it’s a trend that is going on all over the world. In a place like this the natural variability is extremely large, but the long term trend goes in one direction,” Christian said.

The one certainty is that the only way to stabilize the oceans is a global effort to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which means a halt to burning fossil fuels, scientists agree.

But there are other actions that will help and work done in Washington State has confirmed that freshwater runoff and sewage are major contributors to acidification in Puget Sound.

“Get a good septic system if you care about the shells on your shore,” Ianson recommended.

On a small scale, experiments such as restoring eelgrass and kelp beds in the Hood Canal are also underway, Manning said.

“The idea is that, as plants grow in the water they absorb CO2 so they can buffer and raise the pH as the plant is actually growing. The question is what happens when the plant dies — does it re-release all that CO2 as it decomposes?” he said.

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.