I just returned from a vacation in the wonderful province of Newfoundland; a place of strong communities that reminded me a lot of Powell River. Regrettably, the other similarity is the fact that these communities, like ours, are facing potentially huge costs because of a reckless and irresponsible hydroelectric project called Muskrat Falls.
Former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford had summed it up nicely: the country is “book-ended by governments that failed their people.” He was also referring to BC’s Site C Dam.
The question of the cancellation of Site C is now on the BC government political agenda and the cost of cancellation, about $2 billion, will likely feature prominently in the decision. But the experience of Newfoundland underlines the importance of calculating the costs of not cancelling. In that province they really have passed the point of no return; Muskrat Falls is three-quarters complete.
Nalcor Energy, the crown corporation in charge of Muskrat Falls, has a new CEO, Stan Marshall, who admitted two weeks ago, “I knew this was a boondoggle that should never have gone ahead. The only way to have solved this was not to have built it in the first place.”
Marshall made the comments while announcing the cost of the project had gone up another billion dollars since last year, from $11.7 billion to $12.7 billion. That figure is $5 billion higher than the original projected cost five years ago.
The first power produced is expected in 2019 at a projected cost of 23.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, 8.2 cents higher than originally projected. As a result, Newfoundlanders will face a doubling of electricity prices. The boondoggle in Newfoundland has its own unique features, just as Site C does. It turns out there was a 2013 report by SNC-Lavalin that warned of huge cost overruns. Had the previous conservative government heeded its warnings it could have been cancelled.
Similarly, Site C should never have been approved. A long list of experts, including a former CEO of BC Hydro and a former head of the BC Utilities Commission, have been warning about Site C for years: the power is not needed and it will double electricity rates. The Liberal government was determined to proceed with Christy Clark’s vanity project, working at breakneck speed to establish facts on the ground so it could not be stopped.
Never mind that the planned end-user of the power, a giant LNG sector, is unlikely to ever come to pass and that existing industrial users, mines and forest companies, have denounced the project for the huge price increases it will entail. Never mind the downstream damage to Wood Buffalo National Park, the destruction of some of BC’s best farmland and the violation of first nations’ rights. And ignore the reckless, 70-year financing which means Site C will not be paid for until 2094.
The NDP government is committed to having the utilities commission examine the project, but all of Powell River, including individuals, businesses, local government, schools, hospitals and social agencies, should be pressing the new government to do the right thing: cancel this abomination. Otherwise we, and three generations to come, will be paying for it every day.
Murray Dobbin is a Powell River freelance writer and social commentator.
