Site C Approval Poses Challenges for Fort St John
Fort St John, B.C. – Relieved.
Fort St John Mayor Lori Ackerman
The reaction of Fort St John Mayor Lori Ackerman to the provincial government’s approval of the $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric project last week.
“We’ve been waiting for this for some time. In fact on my calendar a decision was slated for October 22nd so we now have at least a direction to move in.”
She admits that direction will likely be fraught with challenges – namely the stress it will put on health, police, and education services.
“We already need two more elementary schools and a new middle school. The city has set aside land and hopes to have that conversation with the government.”
Ackerman hesitates to even put a number on how many doctors they need.
“I’m going to take the approach that I’m just going to get out there and pound the pavement along with the Northern Health recruiter and anyone else that’s on that same path and they can let me know when I should stop.”
Fort St. John promises to be ground zero for the project with the dam just 7 kilometres from downtown and Ackerman says it’s sure to boost the city’s population.
“We would expect to see maybe a couple thousand people moving to the community as a result of the project,” adding the city is already growing 2.8% annually with business construction values 11% over what they were this time last year.
Moving forward she says they’ve brought in a third party auditor to prepare for the development ahead and says they still have a lot of work ahead of them.
“We’ve got to as a community sit down with the Site C team from BC Hydro and complete negotiations on an agreement with them. When were told that it was going ahead we were told construction does not start until the summer time which gives us time to finalize these agreements.”
Comments
Let the price gouging begin!
Ft St John survived quite well when the first dam was built,
and the second
I am sure they will do okay for the third.
and even the 4th if the Liberals figure out where to put it.
No way Fort St John is going to be able to handle a large increase in people all at once. Don’t even have enough apartments to handle the amounts of people who plan to move there for ten years. I mean don’t get me wrong the city has put up new buildings but not enough to house 2000 people.
Then the city will build build and build only for all those people to move out in ten years. This just means one thing that could lead to disaster… Shoddy construction workers and companies like what happened in Fort McMurray. Sure hope not. The stress of living there wasn’t bad until 2011! That’s when the city started to finally grow.
She think she has a say..lol.. This government doenst care about the people..
Construction camps as before, don’t panic. The area survived the other two projects and the present oil and gas influx.
Perhaps with the price of oil so low, there will be a drop in employment up there. If the industry is headed to a “bust” cycle, the dam may save them, and the amount of people will stay the same?
You got that right pookerjams, Ft St John has seen many booms and busts and when the revenue from the Tar Sands dries up it will not be just Ft St John that will have financial problems.
Cheers
There seems to be a long stretch between the Concrete dam and the Site C dam location, It almost feels like they can squeeze in a little dam in between, we can call it Site B2.
I’m sure we can squeeze a couple more dams before it hits the BC/Alberta border. We really won’t be changing the over all flow of the dam, The main reservoir is still Williston. We are just taking advantage of the elevation drop.
Dragonmaster: “Let the price gouging begin!”
Have you been to Ft. St. John? The price gouging has been happening for a long time before Site C came along. Many of the locals go to Grande Prarie to make their major purchases.
Sure wish Prince George had a mega project problem in its back yard with a stalling economy , Ft st John should be so lucky to have a problem with a mega project .
Have I been to Fort St John? Thats a good one. If you think pricing has been bad for a long time, you’ve seen nothing yet.
Fortunately the locals are used to the pricing in town. As romualdo pointed out, they’re lucky to have a booming economy and mega projects in their backyard to be able to afford it (to a point).
Buying a house there will become even more problematic than it already is.
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