“The Dirty Dam Truth” – Boston Globe op-ed

6 August 2021

The dirty dam truth, Boston Globe op-ed by Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert

 

The Dirty Dam Truth
The Boston Globe
Ryan Gellert
August 5, 2021

“Hydropower is often marketed as the kind of clean, renewable energy we’re supposed to want. It’s what dam developers have been claiming for decades. But a growing body of scientific research shows just the opposite.”

The Biden administration has taken unprecedented action to confront climate change during its first months in office, from reentering the Paris Agreement on day one to announcing an ambitious greenhouse gas emissions target.

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Reports on Hydro fiascos in Manitoba and B.C. expose the rot at Crown-owned utilities

4 March 2021

 

Full text of this excellent piece by Konrad Yakabuski in the Globe and Mail, March 4, 2021

Misery loves company. And so it was that taxpayers in Manitoba and British Columbia found themselves commiserating last week with the release of separate reports detailing the mismanagement and dissimulation that has left them to foot the bill for uneconomic hydroelectric projects championed by provincial monopolies with dreams of empire.

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BREAKING: West Moberly First Nations Threaten Court Action Regarding Site C Safety Risks

25 January 2021

Also see story here.

WEST MOBERLY FIRST NATIONS

PRESS RELEASE

Court Motion Brought to Access Site C Safety Risks Kept from Public

First Nation “actively considering” new court injunction if work on “unsafe, unnecessary, and unlawful” Site C dam continues

January 25, 2021.

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Globe editorial: The Site C dam has been a disaster in the making for decades. Should B.C. pull the plug?

3 January 2021

Globe and Mail editorial, January 3, 2020

The report must have landed on British Columbia Premier John Horgan’s desk with a thud. It was not a welcome Christmas present.

The report in question is an independent assessment of the troubled Site C hydroelectric dam under construction on the Peace River in the province’s northeast.

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Globe and Mail: B.C. needs a public inquiry to sort out the Site C mess

31 December 2020

By Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail, December 31, 2o20.
Article is paywalled so full text is here.

The evidence is now indisputable that British Columbia’s Liberal government erred in 2014 in approving construction of the Site C hydroelectric dam on the Peace River, and that the province’s current NDP administration should not have allowed the project to proceed in 2017.

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BREAKING: Halt Site C – former Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen, dam engineer Ken Farquharson

1 December 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Halt Site C and launch probe into lax safety oversight of dam project, longtime dam engineer and former BC Hydro CEO urge government

The BC Government is not doing near enough to ensure that a safe dam is built at Site C, says a former CEO and president of BC Hydro and a retired engineer with more than four decades experience, including at BC Hydro’s Mica and Keenleyside dams.

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What happened to the BC NDP’s PowerBC energy plan?

1 November 2020

BC NDP graphic for their abandoned PowerBC energy plan, showing undamaged Peace River Valley

Have a look at the clean energy plan the BC NDP promoted while in opposition before 2017: “PowerBC.” It stands in stark contrast to the NDP’s current “CleanBC” plan, which unlike PowerBC, involves both fracking/LNG and the Site C dam, with the latter functioning to greenwash the former. PowerBC has somehow nearly been scrubbed from the internet, so we are uploading some materials from it here for the historical record.

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34 Powerex officials earn more than $300,000 even as BC vows climate action

20 October 2020

34 Powerex officials earn more than $300,000 even as B.C. vows climate action.
Brent Jang, Globe and Mail, October 20, 2020
Original link
Powerex is the energy trading wing of BC Hydro which last year lost over a billion of our dollars on a failed interest rate hedge.
Story is paywalled, so is reprinted below

Thirty-four officials at Powerex Corp., the energy trading subsidiary of BC Hydro, each earned more than $300,000 in the latest fiscal year as they benefited from a compensation system that critics fear is undermining British Columbia’s climate action plans.

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Gary Mason: Site C is a disaster in the making

B.C.’s Site C dam project is a disaster in the making
By Gary Mason
theglobeandmail.com
October 20, 2020
Article is paywalled, so full text is below.

Of the many issues awaiting the next government of British Columbia, none is more vexing and politically fraught than the Site C dam project.

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The unnecessary Site C dam is shaping up as BC’s Muskrat Falls

The unnecessary Site C dam is shaping up as B.C.’s Muskrat Falls
By Konrad Yakabuski
theglobeandmail.com
October 20, 2020
The story is paywalled, so full text is below.

The Site C Clean Energy Project launching of the super structure bridge off the causeway to an island, spanning the back channel of the Peace River, in October, 2019.

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