Photo by Wayne Sawchuck

Site C is so named because it will be the third dam on the Peace River system, following on from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and the smaller Peace Canyon Dam, built in 1968.

The aforementioned item in Vancouver’s The Province newspaper has a déjà vu element. Despite this urgent-sounding need to meet future demand for domestic power, this massive project situated in B.C.’s northeast corner was shelved then, just as it had been in the mid-1970s. Environmental groups such as the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Sierra Club say there was good reason to halt the project both times. At neither time was the government able to defend the project, especially when the newly created British Columbia Utilities Commission declared the dam unnecessary based on load forecasts. The many current opponents, including leading environmental advocates, still see it as superfluous.

Now the push to resurrect Site C is on once more and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has raised the urgency level, claiming that the province’s energy needs will grow by 20 to 40 per cent in the next 20 years. When completed the power generated is estimated to provide electricity to power 410,000 homes, but the cost of constructing Site C has doubled to $6.6 billion since the last estimate was made in 2005.

On April 19, 2010, standing near the 1960s-era W.A.C. Bennett Dam, Campbell announced, “This is a foundational decision for the future of the province. Site C is an important part of B.C.’s economic and ecological future, and we are ready to take it on.”

But Campbell failed to mention the fact that the damming Site C will flood nearly 5000 hectares of stunningly beautiful river valley, including grade one farmland, forest, and wildlife habitat.

BC Hydro claims to be a net importer of power, but this is only true in the winter months when power is purchased from Alberta and Saskatchewan and the Bonneville Power Administration in the U.S. In summer, BC Hydro exports power to the U.S., especially to keep air conditioning units running in California. This fuels the suspicion of the dam’s opponents that the extra power from Site C will be sold to the U.S. rather than to supplement the domestic market.