Meisner To Blame For Flood?: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

I have been accused of a lot of things in my life, starting a flood (as Bruce Strachan suggested last week) beats them all.

Bruce, who has a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction, says that Rafe Mair and I were responsible for the collapse of the Kemano two project and had the project been built there would have been no flood.

Last winter we had over 190% of normal snow pack, at the same time, one of Alcan’s generators went down and the water that would normally flow to the Kemano River remained in the dam.

Shortly after, one of the two main power lines from Kemano to Kitimat was taken out by a snow slide that resulted in Alcan being forced to shut down a substantial part of its power plant. The generators must have water passing through them in order to operate. Again, that water could not be diverted through to the Kemano River and remained in the dam.

The only spillway on the Kenny Dam is the Skins Lake spillway which empties into the Nechako.

Alcan entered last winter with a reservoir near capacity. In previous years they had faced a problem of not enough water. Had they released water when they discovered what was happening with the snow pack, they could have repeated what took place in 1997, when they released water in the dead of winter causing ice jams and the flooding of homes in Vanderhoof and Prince George. Those ice jams caused serious erosion along the banks of the river in Miworth.

In that instance they had to pay for the damage, and they didn’t want a repeat performance.

So what do you do with an over abundance of water? You can’t divert it into the Kemano River, you see there is no spillway attached to that facility, nor was there one planned in the Kemano 2 project , which by the way was signed off  by (Golly Gee Wiz)  Bruce Strachan on behalf of the Province of British Columbia in 1987.

The only spillway on the Dam sends water through Vanderhoof.  To their credit, Alcan has been able to try and send the water down at times that the other systems are not high.  Don’t forget, the Nautley River also faced a snow pack of record proportions this year. This year a high snow pack, combined with no ability to send the water through the turbines and into the Kemano created a disaster in waiting.

Before signing off, Bruce also should have insisted that the manufacture of power be tied to the manufacture of aluminum in that community and surrounding communities He did neither. The result is Kitimat finds itself in its death throws because a government failed to provide safe guards.

He talks about the fishery, but fails to mention that the Kemano 2 project would have resulted in a Nechako River one tenth of its former size flowing through this area.

He talks about the Chinook salmon and his, “acceptable level of certainty”, so if there are no fish, is that an “acceptable level”?

The Sockeye and the Sturgeon were not even considered by Strachan. The  BC Utilities Commission was also restricted as to what  it could hear because of the terms of reference. The Sockeye Salmon of the Stewart, worth about $70 million a year to the province and dropping dramatically because of water temperatures on the Nechako, were not addressed by Strachan.

I do not have the ability to create a flood, but Bruce Strachan did when he signed off the agreement in ‘87 effectively giving Alcan a license to sell power without ever putting one single dime into industry in that region. He also had the opportunity to put into the agreement safe guards that called for a spillway on the Kemano to prevent what took place,  he did neither, but somehow has taken the liberty of accusing me and Rafe Mair of being able to create a flood.

I took 15 months off work to ensure that I was at the hearings when ever humanly possible, that testimony fills the box of my truck.

Anyone in Canada, as former Alcan Bill Rich discovered, should come well prepared if they wish to enter into a debate with me over the matter.

I'm Meisner, and  that is one man's opinion.    

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