Mark Meiers, a landowner from Fort St. John, has spent countless hours protesting the Site C dam project and has even risked imprisonment to stop the $8.3-billion project on the Peace River, near Fort St. John.
“There’s still 100 kilometres further up the river to destroy like this,” he said as he rode in a boat along the Peace River. “They’ve only barely touched the tip of the iceberg.”
While it might be early days, in nearly a decade worth of construction, even a small amount of work on a project of of this scale is enormous.
Nearly seven square kilometres of forest have been cleared and a camp large enough to house 1,600 workers — offering everything from a movie theatre to a medical clinic — is just months from completion.
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The land is prepped and ready for the major work to begin.
“We know we’re going to need the electricity from Site C,” Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett said. “We might not need every single bit of it the first day that it operates, and even for a few years, but we will need that electricity.”
Critics say it’s electricity the province doesn’t really need.
“What we’re doing with BC Hydro’s project right now is indebting future generations for I don’t know how long,” former Area C Director Arthur Hadland said.
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The amount of forest cleared so far is just a fraction of what’s to come. The barren border along the river banks will stretch another 83 kilometres upstream marking future floodlines.
“The first thing we try to do is avoid the impact,” BC Hydro spokesperson Dave Conway said. “If we can’t do that, we try to mitigate the impact.”
A need for jobs is also driving the province to keep Site C moving forward.
Former farmer Doug Siemens said the impact on agricultural land — a major industry in the area — is about balance.
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“It means that I get to feed my children, plain and simple,” he said “They’re the most important thing to me.”
Meanwhile, Meiers and other protesters say they will continue to fight the project to preserve the region for their children.
“We have to shut this project down,” Meiers said. “This part of the Peace River should be a provincial park never to be touched again.”
– With files from John Hua
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