VANCOUVER – A former PRESIDENT of BC Hydro and a former federal fisheries minister are among 18 Canadians inginging the provincial government to avoid paintings on a massive hydroelectric allocation in northeastern British Columbia.
The letter signed through former Hydro President Marc Eliesen, former Fisheries Minister David Anderson, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the British Columbia Union and others say the structure of the Site C dam will have to be avoided while geotechnical disorders are explored.
They say an independent team of experts deserves to know if and at what cost disorders can be resolved.
The continuous structure of the dam on the Peace River near Fort St. John requires the diversion of the waterway, which, according to the letter, can simply be an “costly and potentially catastrophic mistake. “
The signatories of the letter urge Prime Minister John Horgan to appoint an independent committee to evaluate geotechnical on Site C and publish those findings before making a resolution on the future of the dam.
During a provincial election campaign, Horgan stated that river diversion is mandatory to meet allocation deadlines and meet the budget.
“BC Hydro has worked hard to get the allocation implemented as temporarily and cost-effectively as possible,” he added.
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In the letter, the organization also states that a panel of experts reviews all the prices of the structure to date, as well as the final value to complete the megaproject.
It is estimated that the dam can charge only $12 billion, almost double the original estimate, and the letter warns that geotechnical disorders “will particularly increase the burden of inflating the project. “
Other signatories to the open letter to Horgan include announcer and environmentalist David Suzuki, Chief Roland Willson of the West Moberly First Nations, economists, academics, engineers and politicians.
BC Hydro informed the British Columbia Public Utilities Commission in July that the geology known late last year had created a “project risk,” requiring stability measures to be taken on the right bank of the dam.
Horgan had in the past described the report as “deeply disappointing. “A former British Columbia Deputy Finance Minister was appointed in early August and is expected to release a report in the coming weeks.
The letter states that paintings on Site C will have to be stopped, in part because of pressure on provincial finances imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is not the time to dig an even deeper monetary gap into an expensive task that, after an independent review, can be judged so structurally unhealthy that it is too difficult to complete,” the letter says.
This Canadian Press report was first published on September 28, 2020.
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