The rain comes down in a dense mist as John Ebell shows off the construction site of the Nicknaqueet River Hydro project, high on a hillside above the Wannock River in Rivers Inlet, a fjord on the central coast of B.C.

It’s the perfect weather, he says, to illustrate why a small-scale hydroelectric project is so perfect for the area.

“There’s a lot of rainfall here, and there’s a lot of mountains,” Ebell, project manager with the Barkley Project Group, told DeSmog Canada. “So we have drop, and we have rainfall. That’s a perfect combination for hydropower.”

The river below is home to all five Pacific species of salmon, including some of the biggest chinook* in the world. So traditional hydropower — with a dam, a reservoir and inherent risks to spawning grounds — was not acceptable to the community.

They decided on run-of-river, a less intrusive method that involves diverting some of the river’s flow to power a turbine, then returning it to the source.

“This project will displace 97 per cent of the community’s energy needs on an annual basis,” Ebell said.

“The Wuikinuxv Nation is setting a great example demonstrating renewable energy. They’re showing that it’s clean and it’s feasible and it’s possible to displace diesel with renewable energy.”

At the moment, those needs are met by diesel fuel, imported by barge and stored in two huge diesel tanks, rusting at the mouth of the Wannock River. For decades, they have served as a reminder of the community’s dependence on diesel.

A 2011 Natural Resources Canada report showed about 90 per cent of the electricity generated in remote communities in B.C. comes from diesel, at an annual cost of more than $3 million per year. In Nunavut, that cost skyrockets to more than $40 million.

The 2017 federal budget set aside $715 million over 11 years to help communities get off diesel, either by generating their own renewable power or by hooking up to the grid. The latter wasn’t an option for the Wuikinuxv, however, which learned in late 2013 that BC Hydro would not be providing their isolated community with electricity — despite plans to do so. That’s when the nation’s attention turned to the idea of locally generated, renewable electricity as a way of surviving off the grid.

Total costs for the Rivers Inlet hydro project came to $9.8 million. The province of B.C. provided nearly $600,000 to the community through the First Nations Clean Energy Business Fund and now-defunct Community Energy Leadership Fund, while the remainder was supplied through federal funds.

Diesel Cost Community $1 Million Each Year

“It’s literally a million dollars a year that went to the generator,” Wuikinuxv Elder George Johnson said.

In a community of under 80 people, that is a significant annual investment that diverted money from other projects.

“It’s hard to live out here because we’re so isolated,” George’s stepson, Gordon Moody, who is working as the project’s site safety supervisor, said.

“Everything costs a lot. So cutting costs is a big deal for us.”

Johnson and other Wuikinuxv community leaders have been pushing for the project since the 1960s.

Now, sitting in his carving studio, he smiles widely.

“It’s finally here,” he says.

Project Costs Included Minimizing Impacts on Bears, Salmon

According to the Barkley Group, the project will require an estimated $160,000 in annual maintenance and operation costs. The annual cost includes wages for three part-time employees.

Some of the construction costs, however, were voluntary additions to help reduce the project’s short- and long-term footprint.

For example, drawing on expertise from Raincoast grizzly researcher Megan Adams, the project’s access road was built with a purposely sinuous design, giving bears more time to hear an approaching vehicle.

Slash is stacked perpendicular to the road, giving bears extra escape routes. And in order to keep the area bear-friendly after the project is complete, berry bushes will be encouraged along the transmission line, and remote sensing instruments will keep visits to the site to a minimum.

Ebell looks around the construction site uneasily, apologizing for the state of it. But by construction site standards, it is remarkably tidy and minimal; the narrow road opens up to a slightly wider area that has been cleared to allow room for machines and workers.

The trees on either side stand untouched, and Ebell says once construction is completed this winter, the area will be replanted. All of the cleared area has a purpose, with seemingly little wasted space.

Salmon are also being protected. The entire project takes place above the highest point salmon reach in the stream, meaning their spawning grounds will have as much water when it comes online as they do currently.

Locally Produced Power a Sign of Things to Come

The Nature Conservancy of Canada donated six hectares of former industrial land, which had been set aside for protection, to the project, saying it was “confident the project team has taken all necessary steps to minimize impact on the conservation values of the project lands.”

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesperson for the conservancy explained the organization’s reasoning behind the donation.

“The Wuikinuxv community will benefit considerably from having a reliable, sustainable, locally produced power source, and the environmental gains to be made by transitioning the community off of diesel power is an overall conservation win.”

The project is a sign of things to come up the coast. Other communities — Hesquiaht First Nation in Hot Springs Cove and Dzawada̱ʼenux̱w First Nation in Kingcome Inlet — have projects in the feasibility assessment stages, meaning the coming years should see even more communities coming off diesel power.

“The Wuikinuxv First Nation is setting a great example demonstrating renewable energy,” Ebell says. “They’re showing that it’s clean, that it’s feasible, and that it’s possible to displace diesel with renewable energy.”

* Update: November 7, 2017 4:00pm pst. This article has been updated to reflect the fact that the Wannock River is home to the world’s biggest chinook salmon, not sockeye as previous stated.

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Part one of a two-part series from The Tyee. Read part two: Clean Power Remains a Major Challenge for Remote First Nations. 

Cameron Hill will never forget the cold October night in 1975 when a diesel generating plant breakdown cut all power to Hartley Bay's homes and water treatment. Completely isolated 140 kilometres south of Prince Rupert on British Columbia's north coast, the village and home community of the Gitga'at First Nation (pronounced "Git-Gat") was completely on its own.

"Six weeks later, the power was still out," says Hill, 47, now the school principal and a 20-year Gitga'at band councillor. More than anything else, he remembers watching his family's winter supply of salmon, halibut, moose and berries defrost and spoil in their multiple freezers.

The great blackout was a defining moment for Hartley Bay. Within three years, a plan emerged to build a small hydro project to replace their unreliable, dirty and expensive diesel, which like everything else, they can't source themselves and must be shipped four hours from Prince Rupert.

So it's amazing that, nearly four decades on, the community vision for clean energy remains in limbo. It certainly hasn't been for lack of effort: the Gitga'at have successfully navigated the complexities of multiple government bureaucracies, lined up millions in loans and grants, and were even awarded an energy purchase agreement in 2014. But it has not been enough. The hydro project is stalled, forcing Gitga'at leaders like Hill to face another generation burning the same dirty fuel.

"My mom and dad fought to have hydro," says Hill, who remains one of the community's biggest hydro champions. "Now, my generation is fighting for it, too."

Stuck with Dirty Diesel

Hartley Bay is just one of an estimated 175 remote communities across Canada that must burn diesel fuel to generate electricity. Most are aboriginal hamlets where energy poverty is deeply intertwined with access to clean water, food security and limited economic opportunity. Diesel is dirty, toxic and volatile in price, and many First Nations must move it in by expensive and often seasonal modes of transport, whether by truck, ocean-going ship, rail or even air. Spills are commonplace across the North.

But despite available technology and much talk about ramping up clean energy to avoid catastrophic climate change, aboriginal communities still face enormous barriers in escaping their energy dependence on fossil fuels.

Hartley Bay was one of the first remote B.C. coastal communities to get "electrified" by diesel in 1928, a project funded by the Gitga'at themselves. On a Tyee visit to the community in January 2016, elder and Hereditary Chief Ernie Hill Jr., Cam's father, recounted his mother's experience at a 1928 feast to celebrate the first electric light. It was otherworldly technology to most, he said. Some marvelled at how oil could be fed through transmission wires that were so thin, and one visitor to the community cut a light bulb from a wire, in hopes of taking the light home.

The original 1928 diesel generator still stands. Photo: Christopher Pollon.

That was then. For the 180 Gitga'at who live in Hartley Bay today, life on diesel has become untenable: the cost of generation is on the rise, and brown outs and power surges are a common occurrence. Christmas Day in 2012 saw most of the village men huddled around the generator, trying to fix a cooling system in time to get their turkeys in the oven.

Bills from BC Hydro, which operates and maintains the diesel plant and charges the locals for usage, remain a bone of contention. Despite the installation of smart meters in 2013, inexplicable discrepancies exist in power bills, neighbours complain. Meanwhile, over 500,000 litres of diesel must be shipped in by barge each year, putting local waters at risk. In 2008, a faulty gauge on a storage tank caused 10,000 litres to spill into the ocean.

While the imperative to get off diesel has been mostly economic over the years, awareness of the greenhouse emissions their power plant pumps out — at least 2,000 tonnes a year — strikes close to home.

"Hydro makes business and environmental sense," says Cameron Hill. "Especially coming from a people who still live off the land and don't want to contribute to climate change."

A Vision for Hydro

Hydro also makes a lot of sense in a place where almost five metres of rain falls each year.

Hartley Bay is so wet that buildings must be constructed on wooden stilts driven deep into the swampy edges of the sea. To get anywhere in the village, you must navigate a system of wooden boardwalks built above the spongy muskeg. "Our Elders have said, we must take advantage of what God gave us," recounted Cam Hill. "And that's water."

House on stilts in Hartley Bay. Photo: Christopher Pollon.

Ernie Hill recalls that the federal Department of Indian Affairs briefly viewed getting Hartley Bay off diesel as a priority — during the oil "price shocks" of the early 1970s that saw price spikes and shortages. But after a pre-feasibility plan in 1978, the federal government ultimately balked at the $1-million price tag as oil prices settled back down.

Successive chiefs and councils never lost interest, however. The "run-of-lake" design currently envisioned would see a small dam built on a lake above the village to ensure there's always enough water to make power. A pipe would channel the water down to a powerhouse where it would turn generators before being released back into the Gabion river, which bisects the village and flows out to sea.

The vision guarantees energy security for the community: the diesel plant will be maintained and at the ready, but only as a backup if the hydro plant goes down.

The Gabion River. Photo: Christopher Pollon.

A Health Issue, too

Among the first things I noticed about the Hills' spacious bungalow — other than lots of guns and a pirate flag flying out front — was that the wood stove is always on.

BC Hydro's mantra of putting on a sweater and turning down the heat is not an option here: without steady heat, mould would devour the houses of Hartley Bay, and worse. The local clinic has historically reported high incidences of bronchial, nose, throat and ear problems such as Otitis media in children, that are thought to be linked to exposure to mould.

The Hills buy wood pellets by the tonne from a company in Prince Rupert, made from pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle. Others rely on heaters that burn diesel and heating oil, as expensive and prone to spill as the stuff used at the power plant. But keeping the mould away has its own dangers. Days before I arrived, a house in the village burned to the ground when a damaged plug-in space heater was left unattended.

And therein lies one barrier to getting Hartley Bay its hydro. Fixing and replacing housing on the reserve has to take priority over the new power plant, and there are only so many financial and human resources to handle so many projects. (At least 10 new houses are being built on the reserve this year alone, costing millions.)

A mould-damaged house sits vacant. Photo: Christopher Pollon.

And like many other First Nations, successive Gitga'at band councils have found themselves in perennial crisis management mode, dealing with capital demands as they come up. A hepatitis A outbreak in Hartley Bay in 1997 necessitated a costly revamp of the community's water treatment plant. A new sewage treatment plant looms on the horizon — another $1 million.

Unequal Contest

With fewer than 200 people (another 450 Gitga'at live off-reserve), the community has also been forced to navigate a maze of government jurisdictions and funding bodies in pursuit of its clean energy vision.

That experience is widely shared in off-grid Canadian reserve hamlets, says Liane Inglis, who wrote her 2012 Simon Fraser University thesis on the barriers to clean energy development in remote B.C. communities.

First Nations like Hartley Bay must not only work within their own complex governments (including the often grey jurisdictional zone between elected band councils and hereditary chiefs), but are forced simultaneously to interact with the federal Aboriginal Affairs department, provincial ministries and BC Hydro. The effort can easily overwhelm capacity, she concluded.

Hartley Bay moved forward where it could. Beginning in 2010, it participated in BC Hydro's Remote Community Electrification Program (the program was suspended in early 2015). That led to an agreement by which the Crown utility would buy all the hydro the project generates — and then sell it back to the reserve residents who consume it. Once the project's debt is paid off, the revenues will flow to the First Nation.

For the hydro project to move forward, the Gitga'at needed a buyer for their energy, and through their energy purchase agreement BC Hydro became that buyer. Before that could happen however, the village's aging transmission infrastructure needed a costly and time-intensive upgrade to meet BC Hydro standards.

Some might say that getting this far is an achievement in itself for Hartley Bay. The progress, as I'll report tomorrow, has a lot to do with an unlikely combination of events from outside the tight-knit community: the arrivals of a clean energy champion — and an agent from a pipeline company.

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An interactive map released Monday by the Pembina Institute creates a visual of B.C’s 14,000 jobs in clean energy.

The B.C. Clean Energy Jobs Map quantifies the number of jobs from 156 renewable energy projects including wind and solar power, run-of-river hydro, large hydro, biomass and biogas. Fifteen per cent of the projects are currently under construction. Large hydro provides the most jobs (5,800), followed by biomass and biogas (4,400), run-of-river hydro (2,600) and wind and solar (1,300).

 “Clean energy is a real success story, employing thousands of British Columbians in communities across the province,” said Aaron Ekman, secretary-treasurer of the B.C. Federation of Labour. “Smart, targeted policies will help generate even more of these family-supporting, career-track jobs across British Columbia. The future economic health of our province depends on a strategy that will put more dots on this map.”

“In First Nations communities, these long-term and meaningful jobs are needed,” said Judith Sayers, a strategic advisor to the Hupacasath First Nation, a leader in renewable energy.

On a per capita basis, the highest concentration of clean energy jobs are found in northeastern B.C., a region that is typically prone to the pain of boom-and-bust economic cycles.

“Good well-paying clean energy jobs are situated in all parts of B.C., from its biggest cities to its most remote communities,” said Paul Kariya, executive director of Clean Energy B.C. “The map gives a glimpse of a future in which all of us are working together … to come up with resilient energy solutions that just makes sense.”

In a press release, the Pembina Institute said the clean energy sector is often overlooked as an economic driver relative to fossil fuel industries in the province.

“As the world’s economies look to rapidly reduce carbon pollution, we want to make sure B.C. is well positioned to remain competitive,” said Penelope Comette, the director of Pembina’s clean energy economy program. “Policies that support the development of our clean energy economy will help to future-proof B.C. and enable us to thrive in a low-carbon world.”

The clean energy jobs map is the first of many — other maps will examine B.C.’s entire clean energy economy, including jobs associated with energy efficiency, green buildings and clean transportation technologies and services.

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