On the banks of the Peace River on Saturday, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told hundreds of opponents to the Site C dam that he will be handcuffed if necessary to stop BC Hydro’s mega project from moving ahead. 

“From this point forward we have to really focus our efforts on how we’re going to physically stop this project from happening,” Phillip said during a speech at the 10th annual Paddle for the Peace. “The provincial cabinet recently approved permits to allow construction to begin. That’s where the rubber is going to hit the road.”

An emotional Phillip said B.C. is on the eve of an uprising after the government has repeatedly dealt in “bad faith” with First Nations.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip has vowed to be arrested to stop the Site C Dam.

“If push comes to shove, I for one — being a grandfather of 14 grandchildren who I absolutely adore — I am more than willing to be arrested as long as that will contribute to stopping this project,” he said.

“I know when that moment comes I will not be alone.”

The Last Paddle for the Peace?

About 300 boats took to the water Saturday in what could be the last Paddle for the Peace — held on a stretch of the Peace River that will be flooded if the $8.8 billion Site C dam is built.

Construction is due to start on the dam any day now despite a pending Treaty 8 legal challenge, due to be heard by the federal Supreme Court on July 20.

“This is a watershed moment in the province of British Columbia and in this country,” Phillip said. “We simply can not — we can not allow this to happen.”

Beth Steiner, 8, helps bag lettuce at her parents market garden stand in the Peace Valley. The land the Steiners grow everything from corn to watermelons on will be flooded if the Site C dam is built.

Calls for a moratorium on construction on Site C have gained strength recently with the Greater Vancouver Regional District board, representing 23 local governments and 2.5 million people, voting to ask Premier Christy Clark for a two-year moratorium on construction.

The Peace River Regional District — which includes Fort St. John, the city that would see the most economic activity from the dam — voted on Thursday to write a letter to Clark to request that all construction on Site C be stopped until active court cases regarding the project have been completed.

The B.C. government has been criticized for pushing ahead with the project while ignoring repeated calls for an independent review of costs and demand — a recommendation made by the government’s own panel.

David Suzuki: ‘We Fundamentally Failed’

Famed environmentalist David Suzuki changed his schedule to join the paddle on Saturday (and helped rescue some capsized canoeists while he was at it) because the fight for the Peace Valley is near and dear to his heart. During a keynote speech, he told the crowd about his involvement with stopping the Site C dam for the first time in 1981.

“Thirty-five years later, guess what? We’re fighting exactly the same battles all over again,” Suzuki told the crowd. “What we thought were victories were not victories at all, because we fundamentally failed. We failed to shift the way we see our place on the planet.”

Ranchers Dick and Renee Ardill know the drain of the 34-year fight against the dam all too well. When the dam was first defeated, Dick was a spry 54-year-old. Now he’s 88 and grasps his truck for balance as he walks.

Dick Ardill has spent his 88 years ranching in the Peace Valley. His parents homesteaded the land in 1910.

His daughter Renee is sick of telling their story.

“I’m tired of the whole thing,” she told DeSmog Canada during a break from baling hay. “I’m tired of the stupidity of it.”

“You have to just keep going on and doing your job and, if we lose and they build the thing, we’ll worry about that when the time comes. In the meantime, I’m hoping that someone comes to their senses.”

While the recent rejection of the Peace Valley Landowners Association legal challenge was disappointing, it’s not the end of the world, Renee says.

“The battle goes on.”

Injunctions Will Be Filed to Stop Site C Dam Construction

“This is the tenth year we’ve done this and if BC Hydro and B.C. have their way we won’t be doing it any more,” said Roland Willson, chief of West Moberly First Nation, before canoes were put in the water.

West Moberly Chief Roland Willson.

In an interview with DeSmog Canada, Willson said he’s holding out for the courts to make the right decision.

“The dam is a direct infringement of our treaty rights,” he said.

Willson said injunctions will be filed to stop any construction that will cause “irreparable harm.”

Farmer Ken Boon, who hosts the Paddle for the Peace on his land, says the early construction plans look like a soft start.

“I’m still confident this dam will not be built,” Boon said. “All we’ve got to do is win one court case.”

Ken Boon is confident the Site C dam will not be built.

Boon’s land will be flooded if the dam is built, but he has yet to be approached by BC Hydro about moving.

“I’m pretty sure they’re expecting a lot of these to go to expropriation if things carry on,” he said.

As it stands, Boon and his wife Arlene still aren’t thinking about moving.

‘We’re Being Mowed Over’

Shawna-Marie Phillips is less optimistic. If construction moves forward, a 3,000-man camp will be located one kilometre from her organic farm and ranch.

Sometimes it feels like she’s yelling into the void and nobody’s listening, she said.

Given that the Site C dam is the most expensive public project in B.C. history, yet only one reporter from a major news outlet attended Saturday’s event, Phillips could be forgiven for feeling out of sight and out of mind.

“I feel like we’re being mowed over,” she said.  “I get a feeling that this is the last time.”

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The Peace Valley Landowner Association has served a petition for judicial review asking the B.C. Supreme Court to quash the provincial environmental assessment certificate granted Oct. 14 to BC Hydro to build the $8 billion Site C dam.

Lawyer Maegan Giltrow says that in granting the environmental certificate, the ministers of Environment and of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations failed to consider the joint review panel’s assessment of the economics of the Site C project.

“Not only was the joint review panel required by law to make recommendations about cost … but the ministers were bound by law to consider those recommendations,” Giltrow said. “This goes to the core of whether the certificate should be issued.”

Assessing the economic impacts of the project was explicitly included in the scope of the joint review panel’s review, but the province ignored the panel’s recommendations on that topic, stating they were outside of the panel’s scope.

“These are not questions for another time,” Giltrow said. “Before granting the certificate, the ministers were bound to consider and weigh the whole picture.”

Questions about the economics of the Site C dam include the cost of construction, the value of the electricity, the impact on rates and alternatives to the project. In rendering its recommendations, the panel noted that Site C would likely be “the largest provincial public expenditure of the next 20 years.”

The panel found that the need for the project was not established on the timeline provided and said it didn’t have the time or resources to analyze the costs of the project. It recommended that the costs be examined by the independent B.C. Utilities Commission, which the B.C. government has subsequently refused to do.

Calling the environmental approvals “seriously flawed,” Peace Valley farmer Ken Boon told a press conference in Vancouver on Wednesday that local residents and First Nations have already received a 90-day start work notice from BC Hydro.

“We trust that the government will ensure that no work will be started while the judicial review runs its course,” he said.

The panel found that energy from Site C wouldn't be needed until 2028 at the earliest.

Boon is president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, which has 54 members — including farmers, ranchers, oilfield workers and teachers — who are impacted by the proposed Site C dam. The landowners' case is detailed in a backgrounder on the petition for a judicial review of the Site C dam.

“Our members, many of whom have lived in the Peace River Valley for generations, are not prepared to allow the remainder of the valley to be destroyed on the basis of flawed environmental approvals,” Boon said. “We are also B.C. ratepayers and taxpayers who are deeply concerned about the cost and impact of this project on BC Hydro rates and the provincial debt.” 

Third-generation rancher Renee Ardill told the press conference that the government chose to ignore the parts of the joint review panel’s report that it didn’t like.

“It’s very, very poor business. Any one with any common sense at all would want a proper financial review before a project like this proceeds,” Ardill said.

Ranchers Renee and Dick Ardill at their Peace Valley ranch, which will be flooded if the Site C dam is built. Credit: Don Hoffmann.

The panel’s report, issued in early May, said: “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 landowners argue that justification has not been achieved.

“Site C is a costly, archaic and destructive project that has been kicked around for nearly 40 years and has been turned down twice,” Boon said.

If built, the Site C dam would be the third dam on the Peace River.

The provincial government has three weeks to file a response to the landowners' petition and then a court date will be set.

Next week, the landowners will serve a similar petition to the federal court, asking it to quash the federal environmental assessment certificate.

The West Moberly First Nation is also expected to file a petition for judicial review of the Site C dam's environmental assessment certificate.

Read more in DeSmog Canada’s 12-part series on the Site C dam.

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.

In 1920, Renee Ardill’s grandparents arrived in the Peace Valley with nothing more than a milk cow, saddle horse and team and wagon. They chose a piece of land on the banks of the Peace River, built a cabin, hunted moose and grew what they could.

“They built everything from the ground up,” Ardill told DeSmog Canada. “Imagine being able to pick your piece of land and make what you wanted out of it.”

The Ardill family has been here ever since, running a cattle ranch on the banks of the Peace. But their days could be numbered if BC Hydro’s Site C hydroelectric dam gets the go-ahead this fall from the provincial and federal governments.

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The panel tasked with reviewing the project found BC Hydro failed to prove that the energy from Site C would be needed within the timeframe set out in the proposal. The panel’s report, released in May, also found that there are cost-effective alternatives to building a new dam, but the province has failed to adequately investigate options such as geothermal.

If built, the dam will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries — impacting 13,000 hectares of agricultural land, including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve, an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria.

That flooding would put the Ardill’s ranch underwater. Thirty-three other farm operations would also be affected by the project, according to the panel’s report.

“This is the best piece of land in the world. My grandpa picked a good spot. And I’m damned if I’m gonna give it up,” Ardill says. “Everybody now lives in the artificial world. People go to the grocery store and get their vegetables and they come wrapped in plastic. That’s not how it is. It comes from somewhere.”

Loss of Farmland in Peace Valley ‘Almost Tragic’: Agriculture Expert

Agriculture experts say the Peace Valley is home to some of the best land in the province, with the ability to produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people, according to agriculture expert Wendy Holm.

“It’s not about what’s economic today,” Holm told DeSmog Canada. “This is land that forms part of the commons. This is part of the natural capital of our country.”

Yet, the joint review panel’s report (PDF) found that loss of agricultural land would not be significant in the context of B.C. or western Canadian agricultural production, while acknowledging “this loss would be highly significant to the farmers who would bear the loss, and that financial compensation would not make up for the loss of a highly valued place and way of life.”

Eveline Wolterson, a soil scientist who gave expert testimony during the review process, says the panel missed the point in its analysis by looking at the current use of land (largely forage production) instead of the potential of the land.

“The reality is that the reason that land is in forage production is because most of it is owned by BC Hydro or it’s in the flood reserve, which means that at any time BC Hydro could expropriate those lands,” Wolterson told DeSmog Canada. “That has discounted the value of that land, as well as discounted the amount of money landowners are willing to invest in a piece of property.”

Wolterson points to the Okanagan Valley’s now booming wine industry as an example of how the panel has failed to think of the future.

“In mid 1970s, the likelihood of agricultural use of those [Okanagan] lands would likely have been low. But because we saved those lands and left them, the use of those lands is extremely high right now,” she says.

The productivity of the agricultural land in the Peace River Valley is unique not only in the region, but in British Columbia and Western Canada, Wolterson said.

Take potatoes, a main production commodity in the Lower Mainland, for example. In the Lower Mainland, yields are about 10 tonnes per hectare. In the Peace Valley, yields are 30 per cent more at 13 tonnes per hectare due to more daylight and ideal conditions in the east-west valley, Wolterson says.

“The area that they are proposing to flood is approximately equivalent to the agricultural land base in Delta, so it’d be like flooding all that land, taking it right out of production,” she says. “It’s almost tragic.”

The David Suzuki Foundation recently released a report looking at the economic benefits of keeping the Peace River region’s remaining farmland and nature intact beyond the market value of agriculture in the region.

The Peace Dividend found that the ecosystem services (such as providing clean air, clean water, carbon storage and habitat for wildlife) provided by farmland and nature in the Peace River Watershed are conservatively worth an estimated $7.9 billion to $8.6 billion a year.

Cantaloupes, Corn Grow in Peace Valley’s Unique Microclimate

Ken and Arlene Boon, owners of Bear Flats Farm and log home builders, know the value of the valley all too well. They regularly see mule deer, moose, elk, wolves and black and grizzly bears on their land.

The Boons host the annual Paddle for the Peace on their farm, where they can grow everything from corn to cantaloupes due to the unique microclimate in the valley. If the dam is built, they will lose their best farmland and their home.

In their submission to the panel, the Boons wrote: “As we write this submission, we feel like a prisoner trying to save his life by writing a statement that will hopefully save him from the death penalty.”

Ken Boon is fighting to save his farm from being flooded by the Site C dam. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

Standing in their garden eating fresh peas, they talk about the five generations of their family who’ve lived on this land.

The 1,100-megawatt Site C dam has been on the books for 30 years and was turned down by the B.C. Utilities Commission in the 1980s. This time around, the B.C. government has exempted the project from a utilities’ commission review, despite calls from local politicians and the joint review panel itself to have the project reviewed by the independent regulator.

“Life has to go on for us, because grandpa was told in the ’70s that he was going to have to move because they were going to build it,” Arlene says. “He passed away without seeing the project happen. I’m sure that our grandkids will be having the same discussion.”

Five generations of Arlene Boon’s family have enjoyed Bear Flats Farm. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

But she hopes her grandchildren won’t have to fight this fight again.

“Our push this time is to try kill it once and for all,” Arlene says.

Solar panels on the Boons property feed energy back to the electricity grid.

“You can generate electricity many ways, but you can only grow food one way,” Ken says. “What we can’t afford to do is to be flooding farmland any more.”

Ken Boon showcases his solar panels, which feed electricity back to the B.C. grid. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

The original Bear Flats Schoolhouse is on the Boons’ land, along with the Bear Flats Museum, which houses 5,000-year-old arrowheads and family heirlooms.

“It’s impossible to replace when you have this kind of history,” Arlene says. “I don’t want to be a millionaire. I just want to be happy on this land.”

For Esther and Poul Pedersen, it’s a similar story. Their 65 hectare (160-acre) property is right above where the Site C dam would be built and is within the zone that could slough into the reservoir.

Located just five minutes outside of Fort St. John, it’s the perfect place to raise horses and give riding lessons.

“It’s really hard to replace,” Esther says. “We feel that the valley is precious.”

To mitigate the lost value of agricultural economic activity, BC Hydro proposed a $20 million agricultural compensation program to support projects in the region, in addition to farm mitigation plans for directly affected agricultural operations.

But as Esther looks out over the Peace River Valley, she — like so many others — says what her family has is irreplaceable.

Esther Pedersen walks to a lookout on her land above the proposed site of the Site C dam. Photo: Emma Gilchrist.

If you read its report closely, it appears the joint review panel did — at least on some level — grasp that sentiment. In coming to its conclusion that the earning potential of the Peace River Valley would appear to be highest as a reservoir, the panel notes it was unable to take into account “heartbreak (for residents who would be displaced from the land of their dreams).”

Question is: how do you put a price on heartbreak?

Back on the Ardill ranch, Renee just put $30,000 into fixing up an old barn.

“I think you have to go forward or give up. You can’t just sit there,” she says. “You have to act like you’re going to keep going or you give up. And I’m not very good at giving up.”

Renee and Dick Ardill at their ranch on the banks of the Peace River. Photo: Don Hoffmann

Ardill’s story is showcased on the StopSiteC website, which aims to gather petition signatures from citizens across the province. She wishes more British Columbians could see her part of the province.

“When you look at it on a map, it doesn’t look like all that big deal. But when you actually stand on the ground and look at it, it is a big deal,” she says.

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.