So now things are bubbling and boiling so to speak in BC.
There has been a fiasco going on under Christy Clark who promised huge royalties and great wealth for BC from the NE Gas exploration, fracking and piping to the coast of cheap LNG for overseas consumption. Anyone who really looked at this project could see it was put up job and would never really happen. Our federal environmental and resources departments as well as fisheries and oceans were supposed to examine the business case for such a development before giving approval but in typical pretty boy fashion they acted for the cameras and not the people of Canada or BC. Not only did they approve this fiasco but they also approved the site C dam being built (without that approval anyway) designed to provide “free” power to Petronas. Can you spell competency?
Fracking takes huge volumes of water and many times I have asked Rich Coleman, the “Minister” in charge, where this water was going to come from and he of course never replied. Now we find that almost every bit of moving water in northern BC has already been dammed by a Petronas offshoot.
CBC did a small incomplete report on this as well.
This has been done without approval of any regulatory body but with the obvious knowledge of Clark and Coleman. No wonder he wouldn’t reply to my requests. Change of power and suddenly the provincial engineers can talk about what has been going on.
Now Petronas has pulled out. What a relief for BC and for the people of NE BC who can think that maybe their drinking water will be safe to drink and the earthquakes will not increase.
Next ramification is that repulsive, unnecessary and dangerous site C dam. What now is the point if that electricity is no longer needed solely for Petronas? Can you imagine that anyone would deliberately bankrupt a crown corporation for the benefit of a corporation from Malaysia? How much would be the bribe for that do you suppose? A Board seat for both Christy and Hamish maybe? Again the question must be asked why did the pretty boy ministers rush to approve this monster? was it because it was altready being built by one of their corporate heros, Ms. Clark?
Note to John Horgan:
It will take a lot of guts to cancel the site C dam and refurbish that whole area, but it would be welcomed by all of BC. We do not need that power, never did, in fact our personal consumption of power is still falling. If we did need more hydro power we could insert extra generators into our existing dams. It is also time to stop paying all those run-of-the-river power companies for not producing any power as we do not need it (about $50 million a year in non-production profits), and stop BC Hydro buying from them at the absurd price gifted by one Gordon Campbell, let them sell what they can if they can on the open market.
The fact is that W A C Bennet built BC Hydro and dams that today would not probably be acceptable, with the idea that the people of BC would never be short of cheap efficient delivery of electric power. He even had an agreement with the seven western states to buy from us on a twenty-year fixed price. He was not to know that a broken-down actor and a drunk from Quebec would get together and create an investment agreement (FTA) which would mean that his price would last as long as that investment deal. You see there can be no increase in power costs across the border without both the President and PM agreeing so we are stuck, and NAFTA reinforced this. California, being broke, still thinks we are gouging them! Luckily it would appear that “The Donald” is determined to do away with NAFTA and we can then charge what our power is worth today. Oh, by the way, run-of-the-river power is unacceptable to the Californians on the grounds that it is not environmentally green.
BC, just like the rest of Canada, needs to make sure that those we elect to REPRESENT our needs do just that and maybe just maybe with this precarious situation in BC we might have that happen. It’s up to us to see that it does.
Peace, but get involved as it is your life.
Jeremy