Photo: outside the EAO meeting on Glacier Howser by Gwen Barlee, Wilderness Committee

Dear Editor & Public,

Recently, the Province has had 3 environmental assessment meetings in the East & West Kootenays around the Glacier/Howser ruin-of-the-river IPP project. I would like to officially comment on both the meetings and my concerns around the Economic, Social, & Environmental costs of this particular project. Combined, roughly 1400 people attended these meetings and not one person spoke positively about the projects in a total of 9 hours of public questions and comments. The Provincial and Federal environmental assessment team had very few answers for the public and directed most of the public’s questions to the proponent’s representatives for the project. Why you may ask? Simply put, because the government assessment group relied completely on the data provided by the proponent with absolutely no independent assessments of this project whatsoever. Further, if the project goes ahead the government will rely on the company to monitor minimum water flows as well, even though their profit is linked to water use and the same company providing the info will benefit from an exclusive energy contract with the government via BC Hydro.

Economically the project is a farce. The public is expected to lease their rivers for 20-40 years for a paltry sum to a private company, in this case Axor, based in Quebec. We then pay phenomenal rates for power produced on the rivers and at the end of the lease the public will not own any of the infrastructure from the project and we will no longer have exclusive rights to the power that will be produced on these rivers after the lease expires. This is being done throughout the province of BC with over 600 river projects already in application and by the end of the process, BC Hydro our public utility, will likely be bankrupt, or at the very least charging the public over double what they now pay for energy. This rate doubling is expected to be within the next 10 years. It is particularly a shame when, through good governance, we currently have a public utility that provides BC with the second cheapest power in North America. I also would like to point out that big industry in the province has secured a fixed rate for energy well into the future with the Liberal government and will not see a rise in their cost of energy, the entire rise in cost of energy due to these projects will be burdened to the public consumer exclusively. Nothing like the Columbia Basin Trust will arise from this project. In all reality, this is private power, for private profit, using public resources.

Social impacts should also be considered. Hundreds of BC rural residents in the west and East Kootenays have said no to these projects through the environmental assessment hearings, yet, through Bill 30 the Liberal Provincial government has essentially taken away any meaningful ability to actually turn down these projects by local government through zoning. The liberal Campbell government has essentially taken away the public’s ability to legitimately say no to these projects through any legal means. This undoubtedly will lead to both legal and illegal direct action against these projects because the public has no other means to protect their rural public lands. The expected social costs for this project must include both the loss of our public spaces and potential incarceration of members of the public due to expected public blockades that will arise from this project. The social costs need to account for both the loss of our mental health through degradation of our backcountry and also the costs to our public legal system for policing, enforcing, and incarceration of the public for protecting the land against these projects. To this date I believe there has already been illegal tampering at the project site, this will no doubt become more of a phenomenon if this project continues to go ahead.

The Environmental costs can speak for themselves. This area is the last intact wildlife corridor in the southern region of BC. If the project goes ahead we will see 25 new roads in the pristine Purcell backcountry, a 90km power line right of way to Invermere from the West Kootenays through some of the last intact old growth forest in the southern interior, and a 14km tunnel the size of a dump truck through a mountain to funnel 5 creeks from their original beds to the Duncan Reservoir. By definition run-of-the-river needs to return the water to the original creek beds but at this particular project this will not be the case, so it is actually a full river diversion project not a run of the river project. If this project goes ahead what will happen to one of the last haven’s for Grizzly Bear’s, Wolverines, Mountain Caribou, Mountain Goats and Bull Trout? What will happen to their ecosystem? We know that “green energy” & “development” are the buzz words for this project but we also know the actual impacts development usually entails and this is often total destruction of the environmental ecosystem. This project and many others are being green washed and should actually be called black energy.

Please give a moment of your time to the benefit of all future generations and your local wildlife by writing a letter to the environmental assessment office. Please send your comments no later than July 29, 2009 to:

Garry Alexander, Project Assessment Director

Environmental Assessment Office

PO Box 9426 Stn Prov Govt

Victoria, BC V8W 9V1

Fax 250-356-6448

Or by e-mail at

Glacier.Howser@gov.bc.ca

Sincerely,

Trevor Hamre

Golden Resident & President of

The Golden Chapter of The Council of Canadians