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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The B.C. government cannot expect support from First Nations for its much-touted liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects if the province insists on steamrolling ahead with the Site C dam, a First Nations chief is warning.

“They want support on LNG, and the level of destruction that is going to bring, and then they want Site C as well. They can’t have them both,” Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nation told DeSmog Canada.

There is no logical reason to have both, Willson added, saying the provincial government has ignored alternatives to Site C, even as the federal Joint Review Panel found there is no immediate need for the power and excess power would be sold at a loss.

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Treaty 8 First Nations in B.C. are vehemently opposed to BC Hydro’s plans to build a third massive dam on the Peace River that would flood more than 5,000 hectares of land, swamp more than 330 recorded archaeological sites and — in direct contravention of the 1899 treaty — destroy land now used for hunting, fishing and collecting medicinal plants.

Initially, some Treaty 8 Tribal Association nations were willing to look at what the B.C. government was offering in terms of mitigation and compensation, but, as more information became available, Willson noted a change in attitude.

“Now everyone is opposed,” he said.

The treaty states First Nations have the right to continue with their way of life “for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow.”

But with massive resource development in the area, the sun, grass and rivers are all at risk and Site C is the final straw, Willson said.

With high levels of methylmercury in fish because of rotting vegetation from the previous two dams, fishing is restricted and ungulates, such as caribou, are being destroyed by the major projects, said Treaty 8 Tribal Association Chief Liz Logan, who has asked the UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya to call on the government of British Columbia to assess cumulative impacts of industrial activity in the area.

A recent study, Passages from the Peace (PDF), by the David Suzuki Foundation and Global Forest Watch Canada found 28,587 kilometres of pipelines, 45,293 kilometres of roads and 116,725 kilometres of seismic lines used for oil and gas exploration within the Peace region.

“We have become the cash register for the province . . . .Now our way of life is going to be interfered with again,” Logan said.

“We are bush people and this is our grocery store, our pharmacy, our school and our church. It still sustains us.”

The treaty is alive, despite damage inflicted on the ecosystem by resource extraction and previous Peace River dams, so the province should think carefully about ramifications of treaty-breaking, Willson said.

The Joint Review Panel agreed the dam will have significant adverse effects on First Nations practices and heritage and that many of those effects cannot be mitigated.

A total of 21 First Nations would be affected if the valley is flooded and, with numerous legal decisions reasserting First Nations’ constitutional rights, there is growing awareness that a court challenge could hold up the $7.9 billion project for years if the province decides this fall to proceed.

First Nations file for judicial review of panel report

This month the Mikisew Cree First Nation, which has nine reserves in northeastern Alberta, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which has eight reserves near the southwestern tip of Lake Athabasca, filed a Federal Court application for a judicial review of the Joint Review Panel report.

The two Treaty 8 First Nations rely on the Peace Athabasca Delta for plant gathering, fishing, hunting and travel through the many lakes and river tributaries and presented evidence at the hearings that showed the Delta is already ecologically stressed, with low water levels affecting wildlife habitat and harvesting.

Any further changes to water levels in the Delta could prevent First Nations from exercising their treaty rights, according to the application, which aims to have some sections of the Joint Review Panel report declared invalid and unlawful, some sections quashed and others referred back to the panel for further consideration.

The application is asking the Federal Court to prohibit the federal and provincial governments from taking any further actions that would allow Site C to proceed until a new report is issued that complies with “principles of procedural fairness.”

BC Hydro spokesman Dave Conway said he could not speculate about the possibility of Site C heading to court.

“However, I can tell you that we aim to fulfill our duty to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate aboriginal groups,” he said.

Logan said the five Treaty 8 nations have not yet voted on whether to go to court, but there are heavy hints that any attempt to build the dam will immediately become entangled in legal battles.

Chief's mandate: 'Oppose this right to the end'

“The only mandate I have right now is to oppose this right to the end. We are going to go back to our people once we hear the decision,” Logan said.

Willson supports the judicial review of the environmental assessment and then, if necessary, a court challenge.

But going to court is expensive, especially when going up against the deep pockets of BC Hydro and the provincial government, he said.

BC Hydro has talked with more than 50 aboriginal groups in hundreds of meetings since 2007 and will continue to look for mitigation measures, Conway said.

“We are committed to providing lasting benefits to aboriginal groups through the construction and operation of the project. In addition, we are negotiating impact benefit agreements with some First Nations where appropriate,” he said.

An impact benefit agreement could mean a lump sum payment, payments over time, cash equivalent benefits or agreements around provincial Crown land, Conway said.

But a major hurdle is the distrust First Nations have for government.

West Moberley First Nation Chief Roland Willson. Credit: Garth Lenz.

“Nothing the B.C. government has done since I have been chief has made me trust that I can believe anything they do,” Willson said.

Logan said she always tries to be hopeful.

“But, unfortunately, in my 16 years of working with this government, I have learned not to really trust what comes out of their mouth,” she said.

Site C likely to get entangled in court challenges

As decision time approaches, other Site C opponents are counting on the power of First Nations.

There is no doubt Treaty 8 nations have a strong case for stopping the dam plans, said Andrea Morison, coordinator of the Peace Valley Environment Association.

“That bodes very well for the campaign and I absolutely expect it would go to court,” Morison said.

However, in the meantime, Peace Valley residents and First Nations are hoping Site C will be rejected and there will be no need for a legal battle.

That will take more pressure from people in southern B.C., Logan said. A petition to stop the Site C dam and save the Peace River Valley has been set up at StopSiteC.org

“We are doing everything we can, along with our environmental friends from down south, to create awareness and tell people ‘it’s coming out of your pocket,’ ” she said.

Photo: Treaty 8 Tribal Chief Liz Logan by Zack Embree.

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