Run of river projects planned near Burton

A Montreal-based development company is planning to develop run of river hydro projects on all of the creeks that flow into the Upper Arrow Lake at Burton.

AXOR, an industry, real estate, public infrastructure and energy company from Quebec has submitted proposals for hydro projects on Caribou Creek, Woden Creek, Burton Creek and Snow Creek, all of which eventually flow onto the Burton Flats, known for its fish spawning grounds and bird habitat. Public notice of the project was included in last week’s Arrow Lakes News.

And it’s not sitting well with RDCK Area K director Paul Peterson, who this week assailed the provincial process which has allowed private interests to stake their claims on public rivers. “I think it’s the most asinine piece of legislation I’ve ever heard of,” said Peterson of the process that allows private groups to stake claims on B.C. rivers, “Where people can go along, look at maps, put claims on certain creeks and put their money down -- the claim never goes away -- it’s forever. They can just sit on it for as long as they want and if power goes way up they can sell it to a conglomerate for a fortune, and they’re selling all the rivers and the creeks,” he said, “They last forever. I mean, even mining claims run out.”

And he doesn’t expect the news to go over well with residents of the small lakeside community, “Burtonites I know aren’t going to be happy about it, and for good reason. I’ve got to assume they’re going to put the intake above where the fish are and make their power once the grade levels off. But that’s still going to leave them with seven kilometres of lines to tap into the grid,” he said.

He feels there’s little he can do about the proposals at this point, and thinks provincial authorities aren’t likely to listen to local opinion on the proposal, “There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I mean, that Glacier-Howser one, look how much fuss the folks made over there, and I’m sure the province was prepared to put them in jail rather than stop the project.” AXOR is also the proponent for the Glacier-Howser project.

Peterson says he could support run of river projects in another form, but objects to the claims process which he feels essentially transfers ownership of the creek to the claim holder, and he doesn’t feel there will be any benefit to Burton.

Nelson-Creston MLA Corky Evans also objects to the governments policy on run of river projects. “I think that it’s a sellout, a terrible sellout. It’s a gold rush mentality and it’s basically selling out the opportunities to make money on the land in B.C. that belongs to the people, to private interests.”

He says he’d support public projects, or ones under BC Hydro control, but says regulations introduced in 2002 effectively ban Hydro from participating in the small run of river projects “[Hydro and other small projects] work with the provincial grid and they don’t make radical amounts of money for some investor in New York. What’s happening is that the government of B.C., the Liberals have made a rule that Hydro is not allowed to make electricity. That’s like saying Chevrolet is not allowed to make cars.”

Evans says the approval process is slanted towards the developer. “I don’t know the proponents [at Burton], I don’t know the application, I don’t what it looks like, but of course they will all be accepted because the process by which government accepts them really has nothing to do with what the local people think. When I said it’s like a gold rush, I meant what I said. People are staking claim to places where they personally have no intention or financial wherewithal to develop projects, but by virtue of owning the claim, you can then find an investor who will the pick up the project and ultimately General Electric owns it,” says Evans, “Because General Electric being the largest source of capital on this continent will eventually buy out shares in the claim or the whole company, and General Electric or other super-large funds of capital will wind up controlling those claims that prove themselves as being able to make money.”

After the contract with the province expires, B.C. loses control of the power, says Evans. “The rate at which Hydro is going to pay them is just going to guarantee them wealth for 30 years. After which time, instead of becoming public property they get the right to export power.”

As for what people could do if they were opposed to the run of river projects, Evans supports networking on a provincial scale, “I don’t have a lot of hope that a person could change an individual project, but there are organizations like Citizens for Public Power who are trying to bring the entire initiative to a halt or a slowdown. And, if the citizens of Burton don’t like those four projects, like the people at Slocan Park that I talked to and Argenta and Meadow Creek, both of whom also have projects behind them, [should] participate with COPE and Citizen’s for Public Power and those who live in other places. There are 500 of these things around the province. That means there are 500 different communities involved and people need to network and take political action and convince the government this is not their idea of how they want BC Hydro to work.”

Evans believes we’ll see every river in the area eventually end up with a run of river project proposal of one type or another on it.

He says because the Kootenays have steep mountains and snowpack, there’ll likely be a project proposal of this type on most, if not all rivers in the area. “It doesn’t mean they’ll all be built. It doesn’t mean that 10 per cent of them will be built. But B.C. will never be the same. ... And, ultimately, your power bill will go up.”

Mike Bruce, Director of Communications with the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE), who are leading a campaign against the run of river projects, has a list of complaints about how the process has been set up. “The huge problem with the projects and actually with the government’s energy policy overall is that we don’t actually even need this power, but nonetheless the government is facilitating a massive giveaway of our resources without any level of public oversight, without the environmental oversight that’s necessary, without the accountability you’d have with public generating facilities and without any attention paid to the economic circumstances and the economic impacts. And when I say that I mean everything from the fact that residential Hydro rates are going up 24 per cent in the next three years and what that means to the long term impact on our power supply, and the fact that these IPPs, when their contracts with BC Hydro expire, which is anywhere from 20 to 40 years, they can then sell their power directly on the open grid and B.C.’s power supply is even less secure in the long run.”

Bruce says the projects are no deal for the taxpayers once subsidies are factored in, “The only way that most of these projects are at all economically feasible is with a massive amount of direct and indirect subsidies from the government, and by the fact that the rates they are getting paid for the power are sometimes twice as much as it costs BC Hydro and well above even the market rate for electricity.” Bruce cites four research papers commissioned by COPE.

He feels the decision to move to a private system is motivated by ideology. “The ultimate reason why the government would do this is ideological. It’s because they want to basically create an industry that treats power as a publicly-traded commodity in North America. So, not for B.C., not something that’s developed for the people, industry and businesses of B.C., but something that is a commodity from which a small group of people will make a tremendous amount of money.”

Bruce says COPE is not against the concept of small hydro, just how it is currently being managed. “We’ve always said there is a role for small hydro, and indeed there is a role for the private sector in all of this, especially for small hydro if it is oriented towards things like community economic development.” He says many small communities dependent on diesel to power could benefit from these projects. “But hardly any of that is happening,” he says, “These are significantly large companies that are doing this and selling it on the grid. The communities affected rarely see any impact from this, even in jobs.”

Simon Gourdeau, manager of the Glacier-Howser project for AXOR, is also overseeing the projects in the rivers behind Burton. He says the projects in Burton are at a very preliminary stage.

He points to the benefits the project will bring to the local economy if they go ahead. “It’s operated by people. Usually every site has at least one operator that’s always on standby -- you’re looking at somebody who lives locally,” he said, “Best case scenario, if they all get done, you’re looking at probably four or five people at least, full-time to operate those sites, and then you’ve got a lot of temporary work over the summer for maintenance, over the winter sometimes,” he said, “It doesn’t bring 100 or 200 jobs, but it does bring long term operation jobs.”

He says the timeline for the projects are open-ended and they’re only at the initial application stage, and it’ll likely be two or three years before they apply for an environmental certificate, with field work to be completed ahead of time.

Gourdeau plays down the footprint the projects will have on the areas in question. He says the majority of roads shown on maps detailing the proposal are pre-existing forest service roads, and the road building would only be small add-ons to the existing roads. “You’re talking about maybe a 100-metre-long section to access the intake location, because the road runs by the creek.” He likens it to building a driveway off a road to a new home.

He said there’d be no tunnels as a part of the project, “There’s a little bit of excavation required, but it’s nothing major,” he said, “Of course you do get activities that come with a construction site, so you have equipment coming in -- cranes, cement trucks and so on -- but there’s not much coming off the site in this case.”

Other than preliminary maps, Gourdeau said there were no other documentation available at this stage because they are assessing the site. “We haven’t even started doing environmental studies or anything else. We could find out that one of those creeks is very important for a specific population of fish and that no project is viable there,” he said.

AXOR has three separate applications for projects on four creeks behind Burton. He said the environmental assessment process could be done one at a time, or all together if they believe all three are viable. Either way, the cumulative effects of the projects will have to be factored in, he said.

Gourdeau says the timeline for actual physical construction would be many years. Giving the Glacier-Howser project as an example, he estimates it took seven years from the project start to an anticipated construction start.

He says the Glacier-Howser project will serve as an example of what the company does once it gets underway, and hopes that will alleviate concerns people might have about the projects. Either way, the Glacier-Howser project is their priority. “Once we take that project through, then we’ll start looking at other possibilities including Burton and Woden. The good think I’d have to say is that people are going to get feedback from [Glacier-Howser] to see how to react with this. There’s a lot of misconception going around with those projects toward the scale or the potential impact. In our case we’re focused mostly locally in the Kootenays in this area and if Glacier-Howser does get approved, and we get to start construction and take it into operation, people are going to at least ... realize a little more clearly what it represents.”

The Arrow Lakes News will follow with part two in a series on run of river projects in the area next week.