Yesterday, Premier Christy Clark announced that the Province has approved the Site C Clean Energy Project. Little discussion of the approval and especially the process has been covered by the media. After numerous testimonies during this ‘rigorous’ environmental assessment process, the project is deemed to be – as claimed by BC Hydro on their website, a “source of clean, renewable and cost-effective electricity for more than 100 years”. A remarkable claim.
The project, said to start in early 2015 will provide 1,100 megawatts of capacity and enough energy to heat about 450 000 homes per year. While simultaneously being ‘green’ and providing all this energy for a span of over 100 years, Site C will bring in over $3 billion to the province and over $40 million in tax revenues to local governments at the upfront cost of $8 billion. Employment opportunities will be brought in for all stages of development and construction, as well as lump sum payments, contract opportunities and special land management designations given to First Nations affected by the project. Another remarkable set of assertions on which hydro expansion is founded.
It is important to un-drown many of the elements this official ‘clean-and-green’ hydro narrative is argued. Specifically, what is not said in this official story is that hydroelectric projects are not ‘green’ or ‘clean’ for the environment. The clean-and-green hydro mantra hinges on the fact dams are not nuclear powered and do not have smokestacks. But the bears and beavers do not stand on the shoreline applauding as bulldozers roar and dynamite goes off. The dam does not only build that immense wall of cement into the landscape; it also comes with access roads, transmission lines and corridors, work camps, borrow pits, road closures and logging, sewage lagoons, and an influx of outside workers into the area. This is even before the dam is built. And there are also dead animals, trees and other debris floating in the muddy-brown water, inaccessible shorelines, submerged root stumps, shoreline and ice-cover fluctuations, an increase in poisonous mercury, and people poaching rare fish and other animals from the dying landscape.
And these are just environmental effects. There is no mention of the dangers work camps full of men pose for the safety of local women, the influx of alcohol, the growing population within the area, the meager jobs for First Nations and other locals who rarely get hired as top engineers, top contractors and leading site managers of the project. Promises of jobs – up to 30 000 person-years of employment throughout the project should not be confused with actual jobs. This clever person-years is double-speak that translates to a time unit used by industries for measuring work-time to get the job done. This does not mean 30 000 jobs but more like 1200 – 3500 jobs during the eight period construction and development period. Then there will be massive layoffs. Of course, not all these jobs will be filled with local workers; most often than not in the case of large projects, workers migrate to where the project is. The locals are often too busy mitigating the damages happening to their remaining lands…
This is important because the story of Site C is a messy one – it is not a single new project but rather another dam that is part of a larger hydro-electric system. Site C cannot really be clean as it is not a stand-alone project. In fact, it will be built on an already fragile landscape criss-crossed with other projects and proposals of pipe-lines, logging, roads, transmission lines, mines. Site C, as the third dam, adds to the larger cumulative environmental effects of the region. Hence, in the absence of a comprehensive review of all development of BC’s north, which has never been done, to call hydro ‘clean-and-green’ is an over-simplified, convenient and untested assertion. For many, it is simply a lie.
The problem with the environmental assessment process is that it looks mainly at the environmental effects; little evaluation, if any, is given to the cultural impacts. The process and much of the environmental regulations are in desperate need of change. The farmers, local residents and affected First Nations will be flooded out along with their stories and histories for this ‘clean-and-green’ project; the social loss associated with development is rarely acknowledged. The notion of loss, cultural trauma and dismemberment from spaces and places on the land are never accepted as “Valued Ecological Components” upon which the process is based on. Neither are species of animals directly associated with local food systems. These are profound cracks in this ‘rigorous’ assessment process for dam[n] approval.
For many First Nations and land-based livelihoods, the land is more than a component of environmental assessments; it is a cultural landscape that record languages, document history and memorialize the life of the Danne-zaa, Cree, Sicanni, Saulteaux and the inter-generational farmers. Anyone who has traveled hydro-made lands can see widespread shoreline erosion and ecological disruption. But many can also discern the damage that is made to communities when traditional lands and meager payouts (considering the billions hydro-generation companies get) are given to Aboriginal communities across Canada. In many such communities, families are divided, housing crises prevail and children are being born into debt. Lawyers, consultants and other bureaucrats on the other hand are getting enriched from each subsequent negotiation and assessment.
Do we really need yet another dam? Can we reduce our electricity use by powering down and educating ourselves and others about our own consumption use and efficiency? How about exploring other energy-sources? In light of the approved decision, it is impertinent to ask if best-practices available in terms of mitigation, accommodation and land rehabilitation and decommissioning of construction infrastructure have been used. If that is the case, then why is the public not reading about revenue-sharing offered to the First Nations and other communities as compensation for the use and destruction of those lands? Why are these communities not been offered free-electricity for the expected 100-year lifespan of the dam? To what extent does local and traditional knowledge serve as the decision-maker in the land protection measures of the numerous impacts and monitoring mechanisms? If best-practices have indeed been used, local and Aboriginal communities should be offered a deal that is at least similar to Quebec’s Peace of the Braves or a long-term economic advantage. This is not the case with Site C.
We need to flood-out the hydro-electric lingo that supports branding a massive dam as ‘clean-and-green’. Dams do not reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses – in fact, with the increased activities from construction, blasting and clearing of vegetation in the area, there will actually be an increase of greenhouse gasses prior to the project. Dams cannot be ‘clean’ because they leave permanent and irrevocable damage, forever changing the local ecosystem. The clean-and-green narrative that hydro uses is indeed quite a claim seeing the extent of damage a hydroelectric generating station and all its infrastructure will have. And, with so many issues left unaddressed, one can wonder how the clean aspect of ‘green’ will play out for local peoples in this murky project. For Site C proponents, ‘clean and green’ marketing can apparently be submerged deep enough to assert its own questionable legitimacy.
Photo: ‘Peace Valley‘ by DeSmogCanada under the license CC BY 2.0