Last Friday, the provincial government announced it was axing BC Hydro’s electricity self-sufficiency and insurance power requirements. 

This drastically reduced the amount of power BC Hydro will buy from private power corporations and the number of streams and rivers that will get put in pipes.

The provincial government’s electricity self-sufficiency policy had required Hydro to plan as if every year from now on was going to be a drought year, meaning that there would be less water behind Hydro’s dams and they would therefore have to buy power from private power companies to make up that shortfall. Of course that means that in regular water years Hydro would have to purchase way more private power than they could use, about 5,000 gigawatt hours more!

On top of the extra power Hydro had to buy to cover these imaginary droughts, the BC government required Hydro to buy another 3,000 gigawatt hours of so called “insurance power.” That means that in a regular water year Hydro is forced to buy 8,000 gigawatt hours it does not need at prices well above what it can sell that extra power for.

Friday’s announcement means that Hydro can go back to planning for average water years and under this more realistic planning model our province is already electricity self-sufficient. This means that the gold rush on BC’s creeks and rivers should be coming to an end!

This failed policy of subsidizing private power projects is already costing ratepayers. BC Hydro reports in 2010 private power companies generated just 16% of the power in BC but they represented 49% of the costs. The long-term costs are even more daunting: BC Hydro is locked in to $40billion in long term contracts.

The policy change does also not effect private power projects that have contracts from BC Hydro but have not been built yet. Rivers like the Kokish, in prime steelhead habitat, and creeks like Tretheway, Shovel and Big Silver near Harrison Hot Springs will continue to be ruined even though the government has finally admitted that we don’t need the power these projects will produce.

That is why we are calling on the government to cancel these projects and will continue to fight for BC’s rivers and creeks.

You can take action to save the Kokish by writing a letter at our website here. Today is also the last day to write a comment to the Environmental Assessment process for the three threatened creeks in the Harrison area.

Please take action to save our wild rivers!

Gwen Barlee | Policy Director
Wilderness Committee