Site C Reaches Employment Milestone
Prince George, B.C. – Twenty-one hundred and counting.
That’s how many workers BC Hydro says were employed at the Site C Clean Energy Project in January.
Of those more than 2,100 workers, the government says 1,719, or 81 per cent of the workforce, were British Columbians.
The January stats also reveal 677 of those workers are from the Peace River Regional District – making up 41 per cent of the construction and non-construction contractor’s workforce.
“The latest job numbers reflect an increase in construction activities as main civil works advances and highway realignment work gets underway on the project,” says the Ministry of Energy and Mines. “Additional construction activities are scheduled to take place this year as the turbines and generators contractor mobilizes to site this spring.”
The Ministry adds there were 195 Aboriginal people working on the project in January along with 257 women.
Comments
All the reasons Site C should NOT proceed: BC Hydro’s debt has grown from $8.1 Billion in 2008 to $18.1 Billion this year, the $9 Billion dollar cost of Site C will put BC Hydro into unacceptably deeper debt, our Hydro fees will more than double (probably triple) as a result; The Royal Society of Canada and 250 of Canada’s top scientists and academics have called for a stop to construction of the Site C dam; Marc Eliesen; former CEO of BC Hydro advises against Site C, as does the Chair of the Site C Review Panel Harry Swain; demand for BC Hydro-electricity is actually decreasing NOT increasing as faltering electricity demand among industrial customers will cost BC Hydro $3.5 billion less in revenue, over the term of its 10-year financial plan; finally, a new poll indicates 73% of British Columbians support the pausing of Site C to review costs and investigate energy alternatives.
ht tps://canadians.org/blog/73-cent-british-columbians-want-construction-site-c-dam-stopped
73%? Highly unlikely, you can’t get 73% of people to agree on anything.
Pulled from the article you cited BH:
“Liberal premier Christy Clark has championed the Site C dam, while NDP leader John Horgan has said he would review the project.
In December 2016, The Globe and Mail reported, “Horgan says while he would be prepared to shut down the hydroelectric dam if a post-election review by the BC Utilities Commission supports that decision, he does not yet have enough information to take a formal position.””
Horgan still doen’t have enough information to have a position? He wants to wait until after the election before he makes up his mind? We have been debating this project for at least 40 years! Yes spineless is a fitting description of Mr Horgan.
And if the NDP is elected government in May are our hydro rates going to be REDUCED? Didn’t think so.
You see, BH, here’s the BIG problem. Just as it would be correct to say Site C should be built now, “…because we’ll never build it cheaper”, it’s just as correct to predict with absolute certainty that the building of Site C will RAISE the cost of hydro to us, along with everything else.
In fact, whether we’re going to need the juice it generates or not, that is its PRIMARY purpose.
This just goes to show you how far we’ve strayed from the original course we once were on when we built dams on the Peace and the Columbia to ensure that British Columbians would ALWAYS have low cost electric power.
That this great ‘natural advantage’, the equivalent of the additional sunshine a place like California gets, say, something that allows them to get two or three crops of many food products in one year while we only get one, would accrue its benefits on US.
Californians don’t pay two or three times what they nick everyone else for the tomatoes and other crops grown there. But WE, up here, are looking at paying two or three times as much for our electricity as a result of this project.
Sure it creates a goodly number of jobs while it’s being built. But afterwards? When our industrial power rates are higher? And our residential rates, too? Are we going to be able to export enough electric power from it for enough dough from abroad to offset these increases? I doubt it.
I’m not against building Site C, per se, but surely after all our experience with what the downsides of inflation are experienced after the last big spate of dam building in the ’60’s and ’70’s, we should have learned something? Namely, lets have a way of ensuring we’re only going to pay for this type of thing ONCE. Not over, and over, and over again. Those of us that are still working, anyways.
BS we are not going to pay 30 cents a kWh because of site C
Well maybe those 73% should go back to candles and cooking on wood stoves to pollute the air and throw away all electronic devices
And who paid for this news story?
Excellent news! The time for naysaying and navel gazing is over. This is a great thing for BC. Let’s get it done!
Energy alternatives…haha. Like the gong show the NDP have going on in Alberta. 4% of Ontario’s power comes from bird slicers and yet that cost the consumer 20% of his electric bill. Could you imagine the cost if it was 100% bird slicers.
4 percent is a high, 1-2 percent of the load is the norm. Can’t believe they pay 80 cents a kWh for solar infeed, that is criminal and costing their population $. They have to shut down the nuclear power plants every once in a while when the wind is producing so they can buy the power for .13 a kWh instead of producing it themselves for .06 – then they sell it for 4 cents a kWh at night on the spot market. They buy it for .13 to sell it for .04, makes total sense. Their dams producing at 2-3 cents a kWh are what is keeping their rates as low as it is in Ontario
We are stuck with this type of system to an extent with IPPs but at least we didn’t go as crazy as .13 or .80 per kWh
Lets remember that when the dams on the Peace and Columbia were built the idea was that we would ALWAYS have low cost electric power. That’s the way the WAC Bennett government set it up. The first challenge to that came when Dave Barrett’s NDP was elected, and promptly DOUBLED industrial electricity rates. That negated a lot of the ‘natural advantage’ that our industries enjoyed. The one that allowed them to pay their workers better than workers elsewhere were making doing the same type of production work, and still be cost competitive in export markets.
Then you know the rest of the story. Residential rates began their steady increase, and far from being told we should all, “Live better electrically”, and being encouraged to consume by BC Hydro, we had the impending scarcity, we must conserve, mantra applied to us. While governments drained BC Hydro with dividends and increases to the water licence rates to make it look like they were doing things for us. Sans tax increases. And even with them. Things that, with the steady rise in hydro costs, (and everything else), more and more were no longer able to pay for themselves.
We have cheap electricity. If you don’t believe me, ask Ontario where green energy policy and do-goodery has run amok.
Call BS, more workers and contractors from outside region and Province,
Millman55 why would they not be BC workers? Lots of skilled trades back from oil fields looking for work. Some people on this site the sky is always falling. Losers
Of those more than 2,100 workers, the government says 1,719, or 81 per cent of the workforce, were British Columbians.
So what does that line really mean… WERE British Columbians..
Did they live in BC at the time of employment..or was it a huge load of former BCrs running back from the oil crash ? Or did they once travel to BC and this government decided if you had ever been to BC you will always have a part of BC in you… lol
I dont believe its needed… but I am just a voter.
WE had hundreds from BC working in oil patch and still lots working in Alberta. So now we can not really complain too much about out of province workers.
Exactly. It’s funny how so many people forget this.
Socredible you left out the part about BC Hydro being a big piggy banks for government and the 60 billion in contracts to IPP’s.
Site C is also required as backup to those IPP’s, for when the water don’t don’t flow and when the wind don’t blow to those very costly inefficient wind generators.
So there you have it IPP generation was built and a lot of money made by the connected for them to supply our power at great cost but then a second source of generation has to be built to backup the first source so double the cost to secure the IPP supply of electricity.
Hey the connected laugh all the way to the bank while us the deplorables get fleeced.
Albertans with new BC addresses.
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