04/29/2008: "BC Power Projects Put Salmon At Risk"

The Georgia Strait Alliance (GSA) is a citizens group out of Nanaimo BC that has been active in protecting the marine environment in the Strait of Georgia, and they are expressing concern over an announcement last week that the Plutonic Power Corporation plans to develop 18 power projects in the Bute Inlet watershed. The presence of these plants on three primary river systems and their tributaries will, they say, only put further pressure on already imperiled fish stocks.

The proposed project is on nearly one million hectares of remote wilderness and the infrastructure needed, including kilometres of penstock and tunneling, two hundred kilometres of roads, the use of hectares of land in powerhouse construction, and 570 kilometres of transmission lines, will make this one of the biggest construction projects in BC.

"This enormous infrastructure development is pushing salmon, already in decline on BC's coast, further to the brink," says Deborah Conner, Executive Director of Georgia Strait Alliance. "We cannot continue to destroy salmon habit and think that we won’t pay a price.”

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Two components of provincial policy in particular are of concern: the requirement that independent power producers (IPPs) develop virtually all new generation in British Columbia, and the goal of self-sufficiency in electricity generation by 2016, which in effect orders BC Hydro to purchase just about all the power that is offered to it by IPPs.

Dozens of small hydro projects already have power purchase agreements with BC Hydro and hundreds more stream locations have been targeted by water license applications. What’s also deeply concerning is that these projects will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions nor will they be adequately monitored before or after construction.

“The government has almost no ability to confirm if these streams are fish-bearing or investigate the potential impacts of even a single project on a stream," says Conner. “There is no capacity to do this essential work within the province or from Fisheries and Oceans Canada because of declining monitoring capacity.