On Nov. 6 CBC Radio and CBC’s Web site carried a story about a run-of-river project on Miller Creek near Pemberton. The story relays information that’s been getting a lot of attention from run-of-river opponents for over a year now. They’ve played it into significant news stories in the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun, and it’s cited frequently in speeches by spokespersons for the Wilderness Committee. Out of about three dozen run-of-river operations in B.C., this is the one where something went wrong — in September 2007. Therefore, opponents claim, it proves their arguments against all independently produced run-of-river hydro.
Something did go wrong. Epcor, the company that runs the project, wasn’t paying attention to water levels. The creek downstream from the project nearly dried up. An emergency warning system went unheeded. The problem persisted for around four hours.
If Epcor was doing its job properly, the problem wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Then Epcor took too long to fix the problem.
Afterwards Epcor stated that nine fish died. The provincial ministry of the environment imposed stricter monitoring requirements, something the company should have followed in the first place.
That was back in September 2007. In October 2007 the Globe and Mail ran a story about the incident by Mark Hume, an outspoken run-of-river opponent whose articles sometimes plug the work of John Calvert. Last May the Vancouver Sun ran another story. Wilderness Committee spokespersons cite the case frequently. Now the CBC has picked it up, dusted it off and given it scary treatment.
The CBC story is based almost entirely on a former ministry of the environment employee who was dogged by controversy a number of times before he retired. The CBC treatment has nothing new except maybe the former employee’s statement that he advised against the run-of-river proposal in the early stages of the approval process.
That would have been in the 1990s or no later than 2000. At that time independent companies were developing these projects without controversy. The groups that now oppose run of river didn’t, back then. Those groups are friendly to the political party that was in office at the time.
Things have changed politically, so we’re now hearing a heavy-handed emotional attack on all independently produced clean electricity proposals. It’s a political attack with little or no environmental basis. The fact that an isolated incident like Miller Creek has to be cited repeatedly shows it’s an exception to the rule of stringent environmental standards. Otherwise opponents would have similar stories to tell about other projects.
But they don’t. So you’ll likely be hearing about Miller Creek again and again.
The only thing it typifies, however, is the opponents’ desperation.