They’re calling it a “gold rush.” Only the prospectors this time out aren’t looking for the shiny, yellow metal. In fact, they’re not looking for any colour at all because this “gold” is usually crystal clear. As you’ve probably guessed, water is “gold” in B.C. now especially if it can be used to generate electricity.

And that’s exactly what’s happening in “Supernatural B.C.” The province is being flooded with “prospectors” that have staked more than 800 rivers, streams and lakes in the province, hoping to become private power producers and make a fortune by exporting the province’s energy bounty.

Fortunes stand to be made, but these fortunes are not necessarily good for B.C. But to better appreciate this, we need a quick look at some recent history.

In 2002, the new Liberal government passed the BC Energy Plan, which stopped BC Hydro, our public utility, from competing with the private sector for power and decreed that Hydro meet future energy needs by buying electricity from private producers. (Site C, now under consideration, was the one exception to this.)

It was this move, that many believe was no accident, that ignited the water gold rush now engulfing the province with applications for independent power projects, or “IPPs,” as they are more commonly known, up by 1,140 per cent since the 2002 energy plan was introduced.

At first blush, this didn’t sound so bad. In a clever bit of greenwashing, the Province sold the plan as “clean energy” and BC Hydro helped the illusion along by talking about small, run-of-the-river power projects akin to the dams on the Bull and Elk Rivers with minimal environmental damage from these non-threatening “green” projects.

For a long time, I fell for this illusion as well until I found out the reality was quite different.

Consider the proposed General Electric/Plutonic Power IPP on Butte Inlet 200 km northwest of Vancouver. It consists of 17 generating plants on three rivers as well as 400 km of transmission lines, 260 km of roads and 100 bridges. It would cost in the $3 to $4 billion range and would produce 1,027 megawatts of power which is more energy then would be generated at Site C. It would also have a huge impact on the grizzly bear and salmon populations in the area.

Hardly a cute, rustic, run-of-the-river project is it!

In fact, the project is so huge, the proponent recently pulled it temporarily from BC Hydro’s “clean energy” call because in part the province’s transmission line infrastructure isn’t large enough to handle it. But there are many more of these IPP applications pending including 80 in the Kootenays alone. One of these is the 125 megawatt Glacier/Howser Axor project near the north end of Kootenay Lake which would divert up to 80 per cent of the flow from five creeks, disrupting the fish population in all of them and result in a 91 km power line being built to the East Kootenay to connect with the BC Hydro grid.

But what’s the larger issue here? We do need power after all and BC Hydro has been a reliable provider for many years. But what the IPP critics are saying, including former Social Credit cabinet minister Rafe Mair, is that IPP’s produce most of their power in the spring and early summer when the small streams they’re located on are running high. In the winter, IPP’s will produce only a fraction of their spring output because the streams are low and many of them will be frozen.

So where will this surplus of spring and early summer power go? California, of course, where the summer air conditioning season starts a lot earlier and where hydro electricity from B.C. has been designated a “renewable” source and subject to lower taxation.

A bonanza for California, a disaster for the BC environment and huge profits for private utilities and multi-national companies like General Electric, the fifth largest company in the world. Do you think these utilities and GE will concern themselves with conservation of B.C.’s precious water supply when they can make more money by using it any way they see fit. And how much of this privately produced power will come into your house when more profits can be made by exporting it?

It’s surely ironic that on the day this was written, the BC government used closure to cut off debate on its latest energy plan labelled euphemistically “The Clean Energy Act.” When was the last time they invoked closure?

You’re absolutely right. It was when they passed the HST. Enuff said.