Second Tunnel At Kemano, Just Kemano Completion With Another Name
Monday, July 16, 2012 @ 11:23 AM
If you wanted to guarantee that you had sufficient power to operate your smelter in the unlikely event that you had a problem with your power making facilities, would you spend $700 million dollars, or would you simply call BC Hydro who are in the business and get some electricity to tide you over?
Think about it this way, if you took $700 million and put it in the bank at say a long term investment at 2.5% that amounts to $17.50 million a year or $175 million over 10 years. Now considering the fact that Rio Tinto Alcan has been making g power at Kemano since the early 50’s without a problem and added to that no where in the world can we find were a “back up power station has been built” and you should be now getting the message about what the new proposal is all about.
Forget about the idea that it would reduce floods in the Nechako system. Rio Tinto Alcan tries to keep the water storage in the reservoir as high as possible, and that makes sense. 1 inch of water means, under the present system, 1 million dollars, so you keep the dam as full as possible which they have done and then in the mid winter if you have too much water and the snowpack is too high, let it go down the river. That is why we have had two flood events in this city over the past decade, strangely enough, both occurred after Alcan released massive amounts of water to compensate for an over abundance of snow.
Now do you think in your wildest dreams that will change? Rio Tinto Alcan has the absolute authority on the spill under their water license.
Now a couple of years ago Rio Tinto Alcan told the citizens of Kitimat to hold on to their hats, the economy was going to go through the roof with the expansion of the smelter. That hasn’t happened and as a matter of fact the city continues to suffer and those in the know understand full well what the plan is, sell power, aluminum smelting is secondary and to hell with the river system.
There is also the matter of why the rush to get the Kemano power house second tunnel finished? The smelter isn’t due to get in operation until 2014. You might also wonder why BC Hydro is installing a new line into Kitimat from Terrace, now is that backup power or is it designed to carry the new load available under a Kemano completion?
If we in the province allow this project to go ahead we are sending the Nechako river system into the ash can and more over creating a new serious problem on the Fraser. If our river systems mean nothing to you , then support the project. If you on the other hand believe that we have already done enough to the Nechako then you had better get off the sofa because the fight is about to begin .
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
Comments
Absolutely right. I’m wondering how it is that they were doing construction on the second tunnel in the first place. Don’t they need a permit to do that? I wasn’t aware that one had been granted.
Also, are they actually building a backup generator at this point? My understand is that what they have been doing is building a second tunnel but not yet any additional generator. The claim as I understand it is that the second tunnel is intended as a backup in case of a problem with the first tunnel. If that’s right, that makes the backup claim even weirder. Generators may break down, but unless there are serious structural problems, tunnels do not. (A serious earthquake, which might make a tunnel collapse, would presumably affect both of them.)
Abuse of power often begins with a lie.
I understand that 1″ of water translates into a certain volume of water and that water, if it went through the turbines could produce $1 million of power during peak times.
I don’t buy it that 1″ of water means a sufficient increase in pressure though. An extra 1″ of water won’t make the turbines move any faster. Letting the water get 5′ or 10′ lower won’t make a hill of beans of difference to the water pressure at Kemano. You don’t have to keep the water in the reservoir at peak height to make hydro.
The reason that Alcan will want to keep water in the reservoir is so that they don’t run out, but as long as they are doing regular releases through the spillway, there is little chance of this happening.
Ben is right about the two floods in P G. IMO RTA could have released water earlier in the winter instead of waiting till the last minute to do so. IMO RTA is building a case for Kemano II. If you let us build it we will divert water at peak times or at times when ice is a threat. This is BULL S4IT. All they want to do is blast out Tatsa Reach to creat a larger USABLE water reserve. Thus the push to complete the new tunnel. Is RTA manipulative, greedy, deceitfull, dishonest ????? I would not call them any of these things, however, IMO I would not trust any part of this organization. Beware, a wolf in sheeps clothing. They play the game to win.
Rio Tintoretto makes more money from selling power back to the grid than making aluminum due to their sweet power deal. We pay through the nose and they make money off the tax payer. Ain’t government grand
By allowing Alcan to sell their power, they no longer have cheap power and that means that they can’t afford to use it for aluminum.
If Alcan doesn’t sell their power, they lose that income stream and it’s pretty lucrative.
We, BC, have created a disincentive preventing Alcan (and now Rio Tinto) from using the power to create jobs.
Rio Tinto, as things sit, is better off to sell the power from Kemano and make aluminum somewhere else in the world where they can get cheaper power.
What about the payout Harcourt’s NDP gave Alcan when it was declared that Kemano 2 was not going to be allowed to proceed?
Was that not something like $500,000,000.00
Did RTA give that back to the people of B.C.?
And what will be left of the Nechako when RTA ultimately get their way?
metalman.
RTA is based in Melbourne with all the other NWO elites. They just want to harvest the provincial resources and care little about social license. They know the North will be a radiation wasteland, and so for them its only about harvesting what ever they can while they can.
IMO their hydro rights should be nationalized by BC Hydro. No private corporation should own the rights to any BC river.
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