Yes. While BC Hydro has claimed that our dams are built to withstand quakes over 5M (magnitude), it has not publicly acknowledged the serious threat that constant, repeated, low level quakes and vibrations pose to dams that already have pre-existing stability problems.  The Peace region is being subjected to thousands of fracking quakes every year and the number is growing. In January 2020 a major exposé by Ben Parfitt revealed that the Peace Canyon dam, which lies downstream of WAC Bennett dam and upstream of Site C, was cracked by fracking quakes in 2007. Parfitt interviewed Dave Unger, BC Hydro’s Construction Manager for the whole Peace region, who was inside the dam when it happened. It’s a harrowing account. The BC Ministry of Energy oversees the Peace River dams and the fracking operations that threaten them, a conflict that remains unresolved. Read Thousands of Quakes, Tied to Fracking, Keep Shaking the Site C Dam Region.

See map of fracking quakes near Site C in a recent 2-year period. Site C is in pink near top left; the fracking quakes are the cluster of nearby circles. Red circles show the quakes listed in the Canadian federal database (NRCan) while blue and green show newly released data from other sources (industry, academia). See the recent CBC report New study detects thousands of earthquakes in B.C. Peace region, most linked to fracking. Please also note the purple lines showing natural faults in the region. The presence of these faults poses a risk because even if small fracking quakes doesn’t damage a dam on their own, they can “critically stress” a natural fault, especially when they’re aggregated, setting off a far larger natural quake. This is in fact what happened when a 4.5M fracking quake was set off in December 2018, felt strongly in Fort St John, caused the evacuation of Site C, and was felt for 100 kilometres.

A significant body of investigative journalism on the risk of fracking to the Peace River dams has been carried out by journalist Ben Parfitt, largely in the news outlets The Narwhal and The Tyee, and in op-eds in the Vancouver Sun and Province. His work has also been published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Mainstream media has been relatively silent on this major ongoing story. Selected articles by Parfitt and others on this issue:

Peace River Frack-Up
The Well From Hell
Peace Canyon dam at risk of failure from fracking-induced earthquakes, documents reveal
Inside BC Hydro’s lost battle to protect major hydro dams from fracking earthquakes
Thousands of Quakes, Tied to Fracking, Keep Shaking the Site C Dam Region, by Andrew Nikiforuk in The Tyee
New study detects thousands of earthquakes in B.C. Peace region, most linked to fracking CBC