Editor, The News:
I read last week about B.C. Hydro being awash in private, high-cost power.
This outcome was so clearly predictable to myself, ARMS and a great many other environmental organizations on the West Coast.
Independent power producers, most being run-of-river hydroelectric operations, were being handed gold-plated contracts to produce electrical power at premium prices in B.C.
Yes, those contracts were so gold-plated, the producers were able to go the banks and get immediate financing for, euphemistically called run over river green electrical projects.
When we came out and criticized these run-of-river projects for not being green, we were called naysayers, typical of environmental groups that were against everything that increased electrical generation in this province.
However, what is so clearly illustrated now and what we were so concerned with at the time has come to pass.
Snow is melting on the slopes of B.C. mountains that feeds these run-of-river operations.
B.C. Hydro has inked contractual obligations to buy this private power at premium prices and, therefore, given away the great opportunity it has now to buy a huge block of below-cost electrical energy coming off the Columbia River system and other U.S. hydroelectric utilities in the Pacific Northwest.
It has now been made extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Hydro to tap into this cheap power now.
Instead, Hydro is being forced to buy from these independent power operators, such as Rio Tinto, Alcan tech resources and General Electric, even as our Crown agency’s own generation system must cut back.
Even our low-cost Peace River generating system, downstream of the WAC Bennett dam – a primary source of hydroelectric power for B.C. – is sitting idle for the first time in decades. This was a thoroughly predicted outcome.
This is a travesty and I am personally outraged. I believe the long suffering ratepayers of B.C. Hydro should see this for what it is – a political boondoggle, cooked up between Gordon Campbell and the independent power producers with the public holding the bag of gold-plated contracts.
This could have been a large profit year for your Crown electrical utility. Instead the private generating utilities in B.C. will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Geoff Clayton
Maple Ridge