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Site C: Let's get on with it and build it!
April 5, 2010 - 6:10pm
+_+
I'll take Hydro power any day of the week over nuclear energy.
The Case against the Site C DamA reporter's Peace River journey against a powerful current of dubious assumptions and official spin. First of five parts this week.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/04/05/CaseAgainstSiteC/
- from the comment section
BC Hydro's Site C DamLets' see. If we would have taken the same position during the 1960's and 1970's, the dams along the Columbia and Peace Rivers would never have been built.
BC Hydro would not have had these legacy dams today and BC citizens would not be the beneficiaries of relatively low electricity rates.
When BC Hydro first applied to construct Site C during 1980, the Revelstoke dam along the Columbia had yet to be constructed.
Time to get BC Hydro back into the energy game big time. I mean come on people we don't all want new power generation to be constructed by IPP's or do we?
Also time to take a page out of Manitoba Hydro's notebook. That is, construct large dams such as Site C, enter into long-term energy purchase agreements with various U.S. states making these U.S. states pay off a good chunk of Site C's capital costs over time.
By the time BC Hydro requires the power for its BC needs, Site C's capital costs could potentially be substantially paid off and thus BC Hydro will be once again producing relatively cheap power from Site C with concurrent lower electricty rates
Some people don't really understand the energy trading provisions of NAFTA, do they?
Whenever energy is sold to the U.S. we are obliged to continue selling it in the same proportion and at the same favorable rates in perpetuity.
Sounds like you support NAFTA, I don't.
The workers of BC need some decent jobs, and Site C hopefully will provide that.
Sounds like you support damming Canadian rivers to forever serve American needs. I don't.
What about BC's energy needs?
I believe in using renewable resources, don't you?
We don't need the power. Why flood valuable agricultural land just so more power can be exported to the US?
from the article linked above:
How do you know we don't need the power?
There are IPPs being created thoughout the province or haven't you noticed?
Yes I have noticed. I have also noticed that BC is a net exporter of power. Therefore neither the IPPs or Site C are needed.
from http://wildernesscommittee.org/news/industry_questions_power_export_scheme
Analysing BC"s power balance of trade is not easy. BC buys cheap coal fired power from Alberta so it can sell hydro power on the spot market to California at a higher price. If BC Hydro was operated in the interests of British Columbians we could stop both exports to the US and imports from Alberta.
The Columbia River Treaty allower the flooding on severl BC valleys in exchange for (anong other things) "downstream benefits" which could have been taken as power, but instead was taken in cash in the form of the Columbia Basin Trust. The Province has a choice to import power generated by the flooding of it's own valleys but it chooses to build even more dams instead.
Actually it is not in BC residents' interests to have these private IPP. But Site C is something different as it stays in the public's hands.
And politically you can NOT run against decent jobs and expect to win in BC, nor in Canada. And it is the same picture for the pipelines.
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Damming the Peace River is not the "green" option.
Like all major dam projects, the goal is not energy, or green power, or jobs, or sustainability. The goal of large-scale dam projects is always, always, the enrichment of a connected political elite at the expense of the local residents, first nations communities, and downstream ecosystems.
Have you been in the Peace River valley that is slated to be destroyed to enrich BC Hydro and its shareholders? I doubt it. Northreport sounds like a typical privileged urbanite whose solutions to entirely fabricated problems will always come at the expense of those people least able to defend themselves.
Those people will lose their homes, the valley ecosystem will be destroyed, downstream communities will face water shortages and lower river levels, First Nations communities will be displaced and further marginalized (White people want "clean" power, Indians have to deal with the consequences without any voice or recourse).
Let's stick a nuclear power plant in North Vancouver, and see how juiced BCers are for "clean" power.
The only purpose for Site C would be to export energy. From the Georgia Straight:
With an increasing population, and increasing use of technological gadgets, how can that possibly be? What about all the electrical cars that are about to be massproduced and consumed. And all the mining that is starting up again in BC as well. It just doesn't make sense that our power needs won't expand.
And what about all our future hovercars and jetpacks?
The problem isn't that there isn't enough power. The problem is a sense of entitlement that demands ever increasing resource consumption for useless crap like electric cars, and the destruction of a river system in support of shareholder profits.
It's gotta stop. Saying the problem is that we're running out of power is like a junkie saying his problem isn't that he's a drug addict, it's finding more dealers to keep him in the junk when he starts using more.
I think if BC Hydro was left alone to do its own thing, as opposed to being a tool for the government of choice, they would have an excellent environmental energy program for BC.
...guess we know what our impending hydro increase is actually going for....to build a new dam, that is unneeded.
This is a bad bad idea....
If BC Hydro was actually servicing the need of the electorate of British Columbia then "the progressive steps" would not need to address extra "expansionary efforts to maximize profits." The business of BC Hydro, as a public company, is to serve that electorate not to fund electrical consumers in other places. It is about here at home. It is about statistical determinations as to the cost to these consumers in BC. Two tier systems my ass.
The rates increases are bogus attempts to profit off the backs of the people of BC when it should have been used to keep the cost of hydro down. Any privatization government would see that you pay according to the market consideration, like BC gas did to a conversion.
Ultimately, it sets up the company to be sold based on that profitability?
Anyway, run of the river projects and BCUC should be put under investigation. Descisions there are able to implement allowance for increases but it is not able to stop the BC Governement for the Run of the river rojects? These do not help the people of British Columbia and was nothing more then a profit scheme off the back of nature. "Inside government information" lead to a mass exodus of people who would invest to profit.
How many people of British Columbia knew of the contracts?
updated with correct link and special emphasis
Maybe people will stop voting against their own interests soon?
Actually about 50% of voters in the last election did just that. They stayed at home because they felt no party was addressing their interests. In BC the choice seems to be between a well funded Friedmanite cabal or an anti-tax party who brags that they set up the regulatory structure that has allowed the extraction of dirty, dirty shale oil from the BC North.
Yes truck all our food in from other places. That will secure the future for us.
You are joking aren't you?
IN a state of apathy....such a statement may seem appealling below?
Haven't seen to much interest in a defining of the "public services" other then Thanks trying to organize the thoughts in a framework.
Click on image for larger viewing
So, that is what my post was about. More in helping to reshape what pubic services can mean when we as citizens own that company.
If the dam was thought to create jobs, it will never be about that no matter how hard you try to justify it. We know a profitable busness "can take care of it's own without adding hidden costs" to economy recovery. Shall it be off the back of families and workers who are now sitting at home while our CEO's shall not be given any more preference then the workers that work to sustain this busness for the province.
Time to shake up the glass houses these people of busness think their in.
Alcan Makes Power an Election Issue by Heather Ramsey
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It askes that we be shaken out of that apathetic state and to recognize now, it is not about being politcal anymore. It a matter of survival and their is no limit it seems when given a blank check, what's left to fight with?
Friday, May 13, 2005 click on imageIt helps to clarify how the state of things have come to pass, and how they work regardless of BCUC rulings.
A little history lesson.
People need to give their head a good shake. Now you get some sense of what has been going on and where it was going. It doesn't have to be that way. You can "redefine what you want out of a public company."
We live on a constantly changing planet surface. 3/4s of the earth's surface is covered with water, yet fresh water is in short supply. Peace River folks might want to consider how to put all the coming dammed up water to productive use, instead of crying over spilled milk, er water.
And sure let's have wind power generated throughout the province, and the country as well. People in BC should be thanking their lucky stars they don't have to depend on nuclear power like those poor folks around Toronto.
Goddamn right! They can sell that water to the Bellagio! Who needs functioning river ecosystems and sustainable water use when we can have this:
And if a few multinational corporations and a few Liberal insiders get filthy rich off of the destruction of what's left of the Peace River valley, so what? At least a few people will have a few temporary jobs, and Northreport can blather on and on like some 1950's small town booster. Just because every claim made by the proponents of these hydro projects turn out to be complete bullshit doesn't mean that they can't be repeated ad nauseam as if they were true.
Site C has been on the drawing board for a long time.
Just like many other things in life, it's often too bad for people who don't plan ahead.
If you want nuclear power energy, go East young man, go East. We don't need it out here on the Left Coast
Yes most certainly the North Report has "nothing new to add?" I think we want to push forward a "clear message" to clear the air of a "politico mesmerizer," while dealing with the issues. You just had to know of the idea of the "insatiable hunger's origination" as well as the offshoots that are used to prep for private market conditions.
This requires "a clear definition of public service" and one that has not been distorted by those forces which seek to "serve it's own for profit ends."
The Whole System
The public understanding to support the existing system should be calibrated to mean, in order to make life bearable at advantages that seek to minimize those costs to Nature and for Provincial consumers.
The infrastructure already exists to make this so, yet does not perform in any way that I know of that profits Nature or the citizens, more then, the private companies that grow out of the need for that sustainability?