by Miriam Trevis
The Record
November 17, 2004
The community of
Gold River was rocked to its foundations when BC Hydro announced on November
3, that Duke Point Power was its preferred proponent under the Vancouver
Island Call for Tenders.
Mayor and council, together with local media had been invited to Nanaimo
for the announcement leading one to speculate that even BC Hydro was not
sadistic enough to send out invitations for bad news. Unfortunately, as
we now all know, it can be.
The atmosphere in the Coast Bastion on the Wednesday morning was absolutely the opposite from what we were expecting. What had been an anticipated celebration, turned out instead to be a wake. We not only mourned the potential loss to our community, we also mourned the loss of responsible decision-making by Crown Corporations in this province.
For BC Hydro to boldly announce that the Duke Point Power bid was the most "cost effective" was a bitter pill to swallow, particularly in light of the fact that there still so many unknown costs associated with this project. Pristine, the Calgary based proponent of Duke Point was not able to give the assembled group any hard facts on the cost of natural gas. BC Hydro representatives glibly spoke of how it would offset the environmental impact of using "dirty" power by introducing new projects on habitat restoration, fuel cell buses, etc. It gave no indication as to whether Pristine would be absorbing these costs, or would they simply be passed on to the taxpayers of this province. Whoever ends up paying, these costs should be included in the Duke Point bid.
Green Island Energy's project uses no public money. All costs associated with bringing the waste materials to the generating plant would be borne by Green Island Energy. Yet, with the Duke Point Power plan, you, the taxpayers of British Columbia, will be paying for the costs of gas, right up to the door of the facility.
BC Hydro wanted Green Island Energy and other Independent Power Proponents of the North Island to pay for the cost of upgrading the transmission lines before it could accept any of the proposals. Yet, with the Duke Point Power plan, you, the taxpayers of British Columbia, will be paying for the cost of a natural gas pipeline (estimated cost in excess of $200 million) to the facility.
After initially agreeing to come to Gold River to discuss this matter later this month, BC Hydro has now advised council that they will not be coming to the community. On November 29, BC Utilities Commission has called a meeting in Vancouver to include all those who wish to present to the BCUC their opposition to Hydro's decision and to be registered as intervenors. This is just a preliminary meeting in order to schedule the hearings at a later date.
Almost 400 letters have been sent from the community to Bob Elton, CEO & President of BC Hydro in the past week. Several other letters have gone to the Premier's office, members of the Hydro Board of Directors and local MLA Rod Visser.
It is essential that this community keep up the pressure on Hydro and the politicians to ensure that the best project, i.e. Green Island Energy, is given the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. It is quite apparent that Hydro did not anticipate any of the other Independent Power Proponents to still be part of the process by the time the contracts were awarded. Obstacles were thrown in the path of GEI by Hydro, but they successfully met and overcame each one. It should be noted that 24 ammendments were made to the original Call for Tender but that not one of them removed Hydro's self-imposed cap of 300 Mw for this Call.
This begs the question,
is Vancouver Island really running out of power, or has BC Hydro got the
taxpayers of this province so heavily indebted already by its dream of
Duke Point that it introduced scare tactics to justify itself?
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