Peace River landowners and Aboriginal First Nations protesters have until midnight to vacate a camp and make way for an $8.8 billion dam on the Peace River, according to a ruling by the British Columbia Supreme Court.

The Canadian court ruled that the protest camp is costing BC Hydro millions of dollars in delays to its Site C dam project in the Peace River valley of northeast British Columbia.

"BC Hydro has the legal authority to do what it is doing and the defendants have no legal rights to obstruct it," an attorney for the province-owned utility told the court on Monday.

The dam is a pet project of B.C. Premier Christy Clark, who opted for the "megaproject" over the proposed alternative of wind and solar energy and biofuels development.

Site C will generate electricity required to liquify natural gas at big LNG export terminals planned along the British Columbia coast.

But the project would inundate thousands of acres of agricultural land, destroy fish and river valley game habitat, and flood Aboriginal First Nations archeological sites.

The protesters had set up camp in an area where BC Hydro will dump its waste rock.

The court ruling came as Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gets ready for this week's meeting with provincial premiers in Vancouver. Trudeau is expected to unveil a green energy initiative.

"Mr. Trudeau, will you write an honorable history for Canada?  Stop the damn dam," Joe Foy, a leader in the Wilderness Committee, the province's most venerable environmental group, wrote on his Facebook page.

Tamo Campos, a native filmmaker, athlete and B.C.'s most high-profile young environmentalist wrote on Tuesday:

"The colonial stains of the courts and the status quo remain unchanged. The pillage, the displacement of all in the name of 'development' continues aided by the public's pacifism, our tax dollars in Hydro's lawyers, and our ignorance of the sacredness of the Peace valley."

Not surprisingly, BC Hydro saw the ruling differently.

"The most important thing is to be able to work safely for everyone's concern, and to be able to move forward and keep the project on time and on budget," CEO Jessica McDonald said in a statement.

Site C is a throwback to dam-building days of B.C. Premier W.A.C. "Wacky" Bennett.

A huge dam upstream on the Peace River bears Bennett's name. It flooded hundreds of miles in the Peace and Parsnip River valleys. The valleys'  forests were not even logged before they were inundated.

Up the upper Columbia Dam, Bennett had built the 600-foot tall Mica Dam, which flooded a 90-mile long reservoir and killed thousands of moose, deer and black bear.  Its forests were not logged, leaving canoeists on the reservoir facing the danger of a tree far below breaking loose.

The Mica Dam has held back water used to power the great third powerhouse at Grand Coulee Dam downstream in the United States.

Another dam on the Columbia River turned B.C.'s beautiful Arrow Lakes into a fluctuating reservoir knock for clouds of dust when the water is drawn down.

The province has at least promised to log areas to be inundated by the Site C project.

The Site C dam has received provincial and federal approval. It is still under legal challenge from Aboriginal First Nations groups. 

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Photo: Site C Supreme Court hearing, Vancouver (Joe Foy)