The BC government announced yesterday that they were going to reluctantly go ahead with the Site C dam project, which disappointed a great many people, not the least of which was the provincial NDP government’s Green Party allies (but not, apparently, to the point of withdrawing confidence, because they still have to get their self-interested electoral reform referendum up and running, and they certainly don’t want to jeopardise that). Oh, and true to form, it’ll cost even more than originally anticipated. Because of course it will. And while I can’t speak to some of the issues with some of the First Nations in the area, some of those cost issues were explored, particularly in this analysis, I also found the arguments of Blair King, who deals with contaminated sites for a living, to be particularly instructive on the issue, both in terms of the costs of remediating the work already done on the site, as well as the fact that other alternatives are simply not going to replace what the dam can do, particularly in the issues of night use for electric vehicles and the seasonal disparity of solar generation with usage – and certainly not for the same costs.
It is clear from the BCUC report that supplying the energy necessary to power the electrification of BC using renewables will cost more than #SiteC but that can be the activist's legacy on this file 2/ #bcpoli
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017
Arguably this increased cost may be worth it to address the possible inequities association with First Nations (I admit to not being an expert on this portion of the file and could be entirely wrong) but I simply don't know #SiteC #bcpoli 4/
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017
If everyone buys electric vehicles as their primary means of transport they will not be charging overnight and even if they did they will drain the reservoirs doing so. Hydro capacity is limited to the amount of water behind the dams #siteC #bcpoli 6/
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017
It takes advantage of the reservoir capacity of the Williston Reservoir to get more bang for the buck while having a big enough reservoir to be relatively independent. It is definitely not a run-of-river project like Dr. Swain keeps claiming #siteC #bcpoli 8/
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017
The #SiteC plan includes methods to address acid rock drainage from all the rock moved to date. That rock, if left undisturbed will be leaching acid within 5 years. The site will need full remediation to protect the fisheries habitat #bcpoli 10/
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017
There is a reason why the decommissioning of mines costs so much money, you need to protect the environment from leachate for years to come. This is why decommissioning #SiteC will not cost $500 Million and will cost $1.2 Billion like the BCUC suggests #bcpoli /12
— Blair King (@BlairKing_ca) December 7, 2017