A Day of Action throughout British Columbia Saturday aimed to call attention to a phenomenon that has been likened to a gold rush - a rash of independent power projects (IPPs) in various stages of development on rivers and streams across the province.

Also called run-of-river hydro projects, IPPs are marketed as "green" because they produce minimal greenhouse gases and do not require massive dams, flooding or reservoirs to generate power.

But critics say IPPs are having a detrimental effect on the environment, and that the B.C. Liberals' move to privatize B.C. Hydro - a crown corporation that has been supplying cheap, reliable power for over 40 years - will result in higher electricity rates and less energy security for British Columbians.

A new energy plan introduced by the government in 2002 paved the way for the privatization of B.C.'s rivers, and B.C. Hydro, operating at a healthy profit, was forced to start buying its energy entirely from the private sector.

According to Gwen Barlee, policy director with the Wilderness Committee, there are now 35 IPPs in operation, and another 45 have energy purchase agreements, giving them the green light to go ahead. Over the past five years, 500 B.C. streams and rivers have been staked by private power comoanies, some of which hail from south of the border.

"When people think of run-of-river, they think of a little turbine in a river, but the reality is far different," says Barlee. "You have dams, transmission lines, roads, logging and river diversion."

Typically, 80-90 per cent of the river is diverted into large pipes called penstocks, which can be several kilometers long. The water then goes into a turbine, before being returned to the river downstream. This interruption in the flow of the river can have "quite a dramatic" effect on the river ecosystem, says Barlee.

And while an environmental assessment process is required, projects that come in below 50 megawatts are exempt, with the result that many companies cap their projects at 49 megawatts in order to avoid having to meet that requirement.

"It's important to remember that environmental legislation was weakened in 2002, and that in the 10 years since the Environmental Assessment Office has been up and running it has never rejected a project," says Barlee.

The transmission lines that come with every IPP can be up to 40 metres wide and 140 kilometres long. One company wants to build transmission lines through Pinecone Burke National Park, a rugged wilderness area located on the edge of the Lower Mainland.

If given the go-ahead, says Barlee, "it will set a terrible precedent."

What worries environmentalists the most is that the cumulative impacts of IPPs in areas where clusters of projects are proposed is not being assessed or measured by the government, which looks at each project as a one-off, Barlee says.

Sixty projects alone have been proposed for the Sea-to-Sky Highway in the Whistler-Squamish corridor northwest of Vancouver, and eight for the Upper Pitt region which has an important salmon habitat.

"I think for many of us we're curious why B.C. Hydro can't play a leadership role in generating clean energy and why the government is allowing these contracts to go exclusively to private companies," says Melissa Davis, executive director for B.C. Citizens for Public Power (BCPP).

Davis notes that, as a public company, B.C. Hydro was "invested in educating and encouraging" the population to conserve energy, but independent producers are not interested in conservation as their success is based on the bottom line.

A non-profit organization formed in 2002 when 40 per cent of B.C. Hydro's administrative functions were turned over to Bermuda-based Accenture Inc., BCPP says BC Hydro was paying about $5.81 for a MWh of electricity from its own supplies in 2006. Now it pays up to $74 for the same amount of power from private producers.

These Energy Purchase Agreements are binding for 20 and 30 years, meaning B.C. Hydro is committed to paying the private sector between $400 and $500 million every year from 2021 to 2039.

"It's unbelievable how much Hydro is paying for this private energy. Virtually none of these projects would get developed except that they get a long-term energy contract from B.C. Hydro, and that ultimately means you and I as rate-payers are going to have to pay all this money," says John Calvert, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University and author of Liquid Gold: Energy Privatization in B.C.

Transmission hook-ups for the IPPs are also being subsidized, coming to an additional $600 million. In contrast, the private companies are only paying a paltry $5,000 - $10,000 in water licence fees.

"Many of these power producers see this as a huge opportunity to make a whole lot of money," says Calvert.

"And as long as B.C. Hydro is forbidden from building any new generation or pursuing other options such as returning the downstream benefits or adjusting industrial prices, then it's got to buy more and more energy to meet our needs and that creates an artificial market."

Calvert says the 11 per cent rate increase for residential homes that occurred over the last three years is only the beginning. "In three or four years we are going to see an enormous increase in rates for residential customers."

At the end of the day, he adds, B.C. residents are "getting absolutely no equity and no guarantee of security of supply" because the independent companies are free to sell the energy anywhere in North America after their contracts expire.

Barlee says that aside from the considerable environmental impacts when the big B.C. Hydro dams were initially built four decades ago, B.C. Hydro is "an incredibly clean green renewable resource" that had public oversight and accountability and brought economic benefit to the people of B.C.

"It's just this bizarre thing where the government for some reason that nobody can understand decided to tie the hands of B.C. Hydro which had been doing a very good job," says Barlee.

"We're the envy of the world for the amount of hydro electricity we produce that's clean and green and for some reason the government thought it would be an excellent idea to give it away to the private sector."

Hundreds of IPPs are slated to be built in regions that have high recreational or wilderness values, such as the Ashlu Creek Green Power Project, due to come online in the next few months.

The Ashlu, with its famous fast-running "box canyon," draws kayakers from around the world, but there are concerns that this will be negatively impacted by the project. The region also has significant ecological value, making the Ledcor project all the more controversial.

Barlee says that as a result of public meetings, the regional district decided not to allow zoning for the $87 million Ashlu project. However, in June 2006 the government introduced Bill 30, which removed the ability of all local governments throughout the province to control the zoning of IPPs. The Ashlu project went ahead.

B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner wasn't available for comment by press time, but he said in a September Georgia Straight news report that run-of-river projects have low "environmental impact" and benefit First Nations communities.

However, the Straight said that while some First Nations band councils sign on to individual projects, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs is calling for a moratorium on run-of-river projects.

"There's a time and place for run-of-river and for river hydro projects to go ahead, but there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it and this government's doing it the wrong way," says Barlee.

"There are big ecological impacts that aren't being addressed. We need to have regional government participation and public consultation, and we need to be aware of the environmental impacts and what we can do to mitigate them."