Nearly two years after a movement against independent power producers swept the Pemberton Valley, the fervour seems to be waning.

That, at least, is the indication one got from a public meeting held at the Pemberton Community Centre on Tuesday night about the Upper Lillooet hydro project, a series of run-of-river facilities that have been advanced as part of BC Hydro's 2008 Clean Power Call.

The project, now in the public comment phase of a review by B.C.'s Environmental Assessment Office, will see hydro facilities developed in three locations: a 74 megawatt (MW) facility generator on the Lillooet River north of Keyhole Falls; a 23 MW facility on Boulder (Pebble) Creek; and a 16 MW facility on North Creek.

Creek Power Inc., a joint venture between Innergex and Ledcor, is pushing the project, which is estimated at a cost of $415 million.

Concerns raised at the meeting were light compared to the volume witnessed at a public meeting about the Ryan River hydro project in Pemberton two years ago.

Environmentalists from the Pemberton Valley, Whistler and elsewhere swarmed that meeting to express their opposition to the project, a 145 MW facility that would burrow a tunnel through Sugarloaf Mountain and divert the flow of the river to the other side.

Proponents Regional Power Inc. could barely make themselves heard over a roar of protest that saw opponents hold pictures of fish and bears, wildlife they thought would be negatively impacted by the project.

Joe Foy, an organizer with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee and a leading voice at the 2008 protest, said the organization didn't know that last Tuesday's meeting was taking place and that it's currently trying to hone in on which projects will actually go through.

"Many seem to have stalled," he said. "We're kind of in the process now of looking at the entire run-of-river situation in the province and trying to figure out which ones actually intend to go forward and which ones maybe just intend to raise money on the stock market."

If there exists any opposition, it likely comes from kayakers, and Josh Bayes is among them.

A salesman with Western Canoeing and Kayaking, which rents and sells kayaks to dozens of people every year from a headquarters based out of Abbotsford, he attended the public meeting last Tuesday to learn more about the project and relate some of his concerns to its proponents.

"The Whistler Pemberton area is known to be one of the best areas in southwestern BC for whitewater," he told Pique. "This may not be the case for long as literally every classic whitewater run has been targeted for hydro development. The people that came here to paddle are looking for a true wilderness experience, not an industrialized one.

"Unfortunately on a global scale BC is getting a bad rep for the astonishing number of projects we're allowing to be built."

Bayes's opposition isn't particular to the Upper Lillooet, per se. It's more about any whitewater kayaking route that's subject to power development. When a run-of-river project is slated for a river, he said, the water flow is altered and the flow kayakers need to paddle safely shifts to another time of year, making an area less desirable to paddlers because other runs will be too high when a river like the Lillooet is at ideal flows.

Other issues relating to such project revolve around access. According to him, when a project was being built on the Ashlu River near Squamish, paddlers were turned around "dozens of times" and faced security checkpoints, obstacles that kept them from finishing their routes.

He also raised the Rutherford Creek project, which like the Upper Lillooet was built by Creek Power Inc. Kayaking on the Rutherford, Bayes said, has "almost ceased to exist" despite the company building a whitewater park at the outflow of its powerhouse.

"The creek was paddlable many weeks of the year and now we are lucky to see a couple of days a year," he said. "It too was a world class kayaking run before the hydro development.

"The company built a 'whitewater park' in the outflow of the power house but it has been plagued with design issues and has never been a benefit to the recreational kayaking community that lost a great resource."

This, however, isn't a fault reserved to the power company. Bayes said kayakers made "crucial mistakes" in negotiations and construction of the project.

Natalie Closs, project manager for the Upper Lillooet, said the company is in talks with the Vancouver Kayak Club, of which Bayes is a member, to get a sense of the concerns and questions that kayakers want addressed. The club administers a trip to the Lillooet every August but it was cancelled this year due to the Meager landslide.

"We are doing a navigation assessment," she said. "That's where we have a navigational assessment, it identifies everything through the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

"It is a requirement for us to get our navigable waters approval to talk to the kayakers, so we can't really go forward with this project without taking to them first."

Closer to home, there are concerns about the environmental impact of the Ted Craddock, a councillor with the Village of Pemberton, worries that a 70-kilometre power lines will be built near Pemberton and the community won't benefit from having them there.

"If it gets approved and the community can live with it, what amenities are we going to get that we'll be able to use under the power lines?" he asked. "For me that's the main issue. I guess every community has to put up with some things in their backyard, but let's make sure there's some benefits for the community in the long run."

The Rutherford Creek Power Plant, a run-of-river facility located just off Highway 99 that's run by Innergex, has an agreement with the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District to provide it with $40,000 that can be put towards community amenities such as trails and events. Craddock wonders whether the SLRD can get a similar deal with the Upper Lillooet project.

"We're talking with them all the time," he said. "We're talking at these community events, we want to see what the community is looking for, and then hopefully we're going to champion their cause. And at the end of the day, maybe we can reach an agreement that everybody's happy with."

Closs said the company has done project presentations to the SLRD and the Village of Pemberton, and spoken with the latter about improvements to a bike trail system located in the mountains that overlook the Pemberton Meadows.

"What we want to do is we want to work with the SLRD and the VOP and incorporate their trail system," Closs said. "So if anything, make improvements to access the trail systems, and we also want to work within the limitations of the Land and Resource Management Plan, so keeping non-motorized areas non-motorized, so we don't want to create additional access that would go against the plan."

Anyone who wishes to offer comments on the project can go to the Environmental Assessment Office's website at www.eao.gov.bc.ca, search for the Upper Lillooet project and submit a comment. They have until Jan. 9 and participants are encouraged to focus their comments on the merits and drawbacks of the project itself.

An EAO official at the meeting said they could not do much with broad comments on the "privatization" of rivers.

Photo: Keyhole Falls on the Upper Lillooet River is one area being targetted by the private hydro power developers.