Just put it on our hydro bills Crissy . Think of the money you’ll make .

Excellent news. It’s an important milestone on the road to the construction of an important clean energy project. As long as rain falls on the upstream watershed, and as long as gravity works, there’ll be reliable source of clean, non-intermittent and high quality electrical power for the next 100+ years.
I applaud the hard work undertaken by our provincial government to make this important project a reality. It’s not just important to me – it’s important to my kids’ kids’ kids’ kids.

Good news for sure just hope that the maximum effort is made to employee BC workers, increase opportunities for apprentices and training for those that need it for the jobs available. These workers will then improve our skilled labour shortage not just in trades and greatly benefit everyone, fail in this regard and we all lose.

This project is being constructed not for the future needs of the people of BC, but for energy needs of the LNG plants. The run of the river projects being built around the province should meet the needs of the people.

‘The run of the river projects being built around the province should meet the needs of the people.’

You obviously don’t understand the energy requirements of this province and the heavy industry that happens in it. Run-of-river projects are a very small (but very important) component of the overall energy mix but the majority of ‘big power’ has to come from our large hydroelectric assets.

Minion the run of the river plants are not firm power, site c is and needed for our increasing power demand and to back up the IPP’s. Look at it this way, the contracts for the IPP’s total 65 billion and then another 8 billion is needed to back up that 65 billion. Friends of the liberals making money hand over fist, your money, as hydro rates going up in part to pay those contracts.

Ataloss why does BC have about the cheapest power in the world? Difficult question so I’ll answer it for you, hydro electric power. Every area in the world with abundant hydro electric power has the lowest rates.

How is your solar system working?

Given the drought conditions being experienced now, the “Run of the Creek” projects might not contribute too much this summer. Important salmon and trout streams are drying up on Vancouver Island.

Seasmutt: How does the competitive bid and tendering process cause the “Friends of the Liberals” to make money hand over fist?

A comment worth reposting:

1. With a price tag of $8 billion, Site C is the largest proposed infrastructure project in Canada. In its first four years, the dam is expected to lose $800 million while it sells surplus power at a third of what it costs to produce it. Building Site C would take eight years — an eternity in the world of energy markets. Consider this: in the past five years, solar costs have dropped 80 per cent, while wind costs have dropped 35 per cent.

2. The Clean Energy Association of B.C. recently put forth a portfolio of renewable options it says would cost $1 billion less than Site C over the next 70 years. What’s more, the joint review panel took the B.C. government to task for failing to pursue research into B.C.’s geothermal resources over the last 31 years (the last time Site C was rejected). Even with next to no research, BC Hydro has estimated geothermal energy could economically replace two-thirds of Site C’s power.

3. The joint review panel said BC Hydro failed to prove that Site C’s power is needed in the immediate future. Even if the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry takes off, it wouldn’t justify building the dam. LNG plants are likely to be powered by natural gas and, even if they did use electricity, the power would be required before Site C became operational circa 2024, according to the panel.

4. The Site C dam would impact 13,000 hectares of agricultural land — including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria. That’s roughly equivalent to taking the agricultural land base in Delta out of production. Those Peace Valley lands could produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people, says agrologist Wendy Holm.

5. “The project would be accompanied by significant environmental and social costs, and the costs would not be borne by those who benefit,” wrote the review panel. B.C.’s Peace region is already home to two mega hydro dams and 16,267 oil and gas well sites. “We have become the cash register for the province…Now our way of life is going to be interfered with again,” Liz Logan, Treaty 8 Tribal Association Chief, said. West Moberly Chief Roland Willson has vowed to challenge the decision in court if an environmental assessment certificate is granted.

In a nutshell: while mega dams may have been a bright idea in the 1960s, in 2014 there are smarter ways of generating electricity. Instead of toiling over an outdated project, let’s move on to 21st century energy solutions.

www. vancouverobserver.com/opinion/five-reasons-why-bc-doesnt-need-site-c-dam

No one posting on this site can give us any indication of the number of industries that actually use power to-day. How this relates to industry that was using it 10/20 years ago.

Just off the top of my head I can give you examples of pulpmills, plywood plants, lumber mills, railway (BC Rail Electric Railway) from Anzac to Tumbler Ridge, and many many mines (Bullmoose, Quintette, Granisle Copper, and Noranda Mines, Topley BC) that have shut down.

To suggest that these industries have been replaced by other industry in the biggest line of BS that one could conceive. If in fact we have a growing industrial industry then give us some examples.

We have sold all the surplus power we can get our hands on to the Americans, and we will do the same with the power from Site C. Then down the road we will buy power from Rio Tinto Alcan to service mines on highway 37 North. Any LNG plants that are built will generate their own power.

So we do NOT have a case for Site C, other than poor management of our hydro over the years, and incompetent Governments.

All the people who support this project either don’t have a clue as to what’s actually happening in this Province in the energy business, or they have a vested interest in the project because of their business or their employment.

Site C is a testament to the impertinence of our Government, and hopefully those opposed to it will be able to stop it.

Thanks Sophie – another invaluable piece of misinformation from URL University. Notice that the URL reads, in part http://www.vancouverobserver.com/opinion... That means that it’s someone’s opinion. That doesn’t make it a correct or defensible line of argument.
In my opinion onions taste bad. Where is the public outrage over Wendy’s putting onions on their hamburgers?

All you have to do is call hydro for information, easy peesy. Then you can tell them they are lying.

Yes surplus power is sold but that does not mean there is excess power. Do you think there should be only enough generation to match load? Tried to explain all this to you before.

The worst thing about Site C is the inflation it will most certainly engender. And that it will be mistaken initially, once again, as a sign of prosperity. It’ll turn out to be anything but, and we’ll end up with a total debt hanging over all sectors of our economy that we’ll be fighting amongst ourselves over which sector should pay. While the funds to pay it with will still be insufficient in every sector.

I didn’t say there was excess power. I said that there is sufficient power in BC to service industry, business, and homes.

You know what the end game here is seamutt, you just choose to go the Hydro Route, even though you know that there are plenty of alternatives.

Alternatives yes but what is the hydro electric. Sufficient power for how long, then what?

Socredible is there lingering debt from all the other dams? If there is its because of governments skimming off the top. I thought you would understand that. What is your solution to handling rising power demand? Go alternative like Portugal, Spain, Greece look what happened to their economies. Have a look at how the price of electricity in increasing in Germany, England and the states. Companies getting out and heading for India, China.

We paid for those dams more than a few times over, seamutt, whatever , if anything, might still be owing on them. Not only directly, by way of interest on the bonded indebtedness of BC Hydro, but also indirectly through inflation. I’ve nothing in particular against building Site C, if it is indeed necessary to meet our projected future energy needs, and a better alternative isn’t as certain. But lets be clear what the ‘financial’ effects are going to be on the BC economy. And do the ‘figures’ with the dollar signs in front of them accurately REFLECT the physical ‘facts’? Or are we poised to engage in another exercise in DISTORTING them? Like we’ve been wont to do in times past with other mega-projects. Surely we should be able to learn from our past experiences, and set-up a system that allows the very real benefits of lower cost electric power to be FULLY realised ‘financially’ by the people of BC.

I hope the government will make allowances to the B.C. contractors who pay taxes to B.C. For example, letting the local bidders have a cushion of say 20% higher, will cost the taxpayer the same in the long run. There are times when the lowest bid doesn’t necessarily cost the least.

Also the figure of 8 to 9 billion is not etched in stone. The Northwest Transmission Line built by B.C. Hydro was supposed to cost 406 million. When all was said and done, the final cost was over 700 million. And incidentally, it was built non-union. So their reasoning to build the dam both union and non-union because the cost will be less means absolutely nothing, it’s just another form of union-breaking.

This project is supposed to power 450,000 homes, that’s a cost of 20,000 each home. If they were to give 450,000 people a 20,000 grant to go to alternate energy, they wouldn’t have to build it at all. I, for one, would gladly get off the grid if I could afford it.

Excellent comment my2bits.

My biggest fear in all of this is that once WE pay to build this dam project, our govt will once again look at privatizing BC Hydro and it (along with water rights) will end up as an American company. Look what happened to BC Gas, BC Rail and BC Tel. If we need the power in the near future, then why not have revisited the Kemano completion project.

Has anyone read the joint panel review?
Are we ready for massive debt for power that MAY not be needed.
The last couple of years, the IPP that I work at has been turned down and hydro has payed us to NOT make power. I’ll say that again. Due to a surplus of power hydro has paid us our contract rate despite provided less than half our generating capability.
This is a make work legacy project that’s justification, despite massive cost to taxpayers and hydro customers, is questionable to say the least.