Six open houses will be held to provide information and garner feedback on the proposed Site C dam – but if you want to attend in person, you’ll have to travel to northern B.C. or Alberta.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and BC Environmental Assessment Office released Tuesday the draft environmental impact statement (http://www.eao.gov.bc.ca/pcp/forms/Site_C_form.html) for the proposed $8 billion, 1,100-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Peace River.

A 45-day public comment period on the impact statement has been scheduled. Written comments will be submitted between April 17 and June 1. Comments can be mailed or submitted online.

A series of open houses has been scheduled for the first two weeks of May:

• May 1, 3 to 8 p.m., North Peace Cultural Centre, Fort St. John;
• May 2, 4 to 8 p.m., Hudson’s Hope Community Hall;
• May 3, 4 to 8 p.m., Pomeroy Inn & Suites, Chetwynd;
• May 8, 4 to 8 p.m., Sawridge Inn & Conference Centre, Peace River, Alberta;
• May 9, 4 to 8 p.m., Best Western Dawson Creek, Dawson Creek;
• May 10, 3 to 8 p.m., Ramada Inn, Prince George.

If approved, the Site C dam is expected to take a decade to build. It would be the third in a series of dams on the B.C. portion of the Peace River.

The project includes a 1,050-metre-long, 60-metre-high earthen dam, an 83-kilometre-long reservoir, a 1,100-MW generating station and two 77-kilometre transmission lines running along an existing right-of-way to connect to BC Hydro’s grid.

The biggest environmental drawback to the plan is that it would require the flooding of 5,340 hectares of prime agricultural land. (See “Damned if we do: Site C revisited” – issue 1142; September 13-20, 2012.)

When first proposed, the plan was to sell much of the surplus power Site C would generate. But an industrial boom in Northern B.C. – which includes three new liquid natural gas plants and new mines – is expected to create a power demand that, by some estimates, would exceed Site C’s capacity by two or three times. (See “Wind wants in on natural gas game” – issue 1168; March 13-19, 2012.)