Like many towns across Alberta, the landscape around Hinton is a pincushion of oil wells. At the bottom of some of the deeper wells, temperatures can reach upwards of 120 degrees Celsius, and that geothermal heat could be about to spur the town on to its next energy windfall.

A plan is underway to pump water up from deep underground, capture the heat it brings to the surface, then re-inject that water into the ground. The captured heat could warm a dozen municipal buildings or even eventually provide electricity.

“That’s attainable, that’s not a huge technical challenge. The question is at what cost,” Jonathan Banks, a research associate in geoscience at the University of Alberta, told DeSmog Canada.

The town recently got $1.2 million in federal and provincial grants to explore the feasibility of the project, known as a Front-End Engineering and Design, or FEED, study. That should be complete by the end of the summer.

“If the FEED study shows that the project is viable…we could start building the system in the fall of 2018,” Banks says, cautioning that there are a number of unknowns, such as an uncertain regulatory process.

Like many Canadian jurisdictions, Alberta currently has no regulatory framework for geothermal power.

The project would be a first for Canada. That has led to apprehension among residents, who tend to be conservative in their approach to energy.

“There’s always insecurity when you’re building something for the first time,” explains newly elected town councillor Dewly Nelson.

Hinton, Alberta Goes Back to the Well — For a New Kind of Energy https://t.co/t3zkq1XlQd

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 20, 2018

Nelson himself started as a critic of the project. Working for the Chamber of Commerce — some of whose members were concerned about the town wasting money — he set about trying to research the project.

“I came up with a little different of an answer than I think people were hoping for,” he says. He now chairs a committee on alternative energy in the community.

“I’m a bit of an evangelist,” he laughs.

A 2016 preliminary study suggested that the cost of a geothermal heating system for the town could be recouped in about 16 years against business-as-usual heating costs.

Nelson concedes the number “could be a little optimistic” at $10.2 million due to the number of hurdles associated with it being the first of its kind.

But he maintains that the benefits of the project extend beyond the lifetime cost (despite insisting that, as a municipal project, for it to be recouping any revenue at all is a plus). He says the spinoff benefits could be in new businesses setting up shop in Hinton due to the cheap, long-term heating contracts the town would be able to provide.

“I think we’ll be surprised at some of the different uses that other people think of,” he says, offering as an example a greenhouse for the fledgling cannabis market. He also points to Boise, Idaho, which uses its similar system to heat an alligator farm.

In Klamath Falls, Oregon, a brewery makes use of the heat. The town’s partner in the project, Calgary-based Epoch Energy, has visited some of those sites to survey their systems.

“Seeing it as a tool for diversifying our economy, that’s the biggest winner for it,” Nelson says.

Two hours away on the other side of the B.C. border, Valemount is also looking at building a “geothermal industrial park” that would make use of a relatively accessible pocket of heat they suspect to be just underneath the town. That could produce electricity, heat water for a brewery, warm a greenhouse and even keep the sidewalks ice-free.

Nelson explains that the American projects also have other lessons to offer Hinton: they charge differently for the use of the power. In Klamath Falls, users are charged directly for the heat. In Boise, users are charged by the volume of water they use, encouraging innovation around efficiency.

Winning over skeptical residents, both Nelson and Banks agree, has been a process of continual engagement and education.

“It doesn’t take a lot to connect with people, and just plant that seed,” Nelson says.

A big part of why Nelson thinks the oil-friendly residents should welcome geothermal to town? It all runs on the same infrastructure and knowledge as the oil and gas industry, making it an excellent way to make use of existing oilfields and some of the workers who have been hit by low oil prices.

“If it ever really takes off on a large scale in Canada, it will be because of oil and gas,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Site C camps would bring 1,700 transient workers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where will workers come from?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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