The City of Williams Lake, B.C., is calling on the province to step in to prevent the closure of a power plant critical to local employment and the municipality’s bottom line.
The Atlantic Power facility generates enough electricity to power about 50,000 homes by burning wood waste.
It’s responsible for about 40 full-time jobs and pays about $1.7 million in direct taxes to the city every year.
“I might have to shut down half of city hall,” Williams Lake Mayor Surinderpal Rathor said of the looming closure.
“This is the single biggest taxpayer to the community.”
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The Atlantic Power plant gave notice last February that it was going to pull out of the community, citing an inability to remain profitable under its current contract with BC Hydro.
Williams Lake City Councillor Scott Nelson said that’s because, with the closure of local sawmills and upgrades to others to improve their efficiency, easy-to-access wood fibre has become more scarce.
Instead, the company now sources inputs from the surrounding Chilcotin Plateau, collecting the waste wood left by wildfires and dead wood that could become fuel for future wildfires, he said.
“As you go further out, you reduce the fires, but it also costs more to bring this into Atlantic Power,” he said.
Nelson said it makes no sense to shutter a plant that’s producing local electricity when the province is already importing power from the U.S. thanks to recent droughts, and while the U.S. is threatening massive tariffs on Canada.
Rathor said the company is weeks away from issuing layoff notices to workers, something he said could devastate the community.
The city is calling on Premier David Eby to step in and ensure BC Hydro negotiates a new contract — something Rathor says the province promised.
“He has always delivered on his promises and I am hopeful he will deliver on his promise on this one too, but the time is running out.”
The Energy Ministry said it recognizes the importance of the plant, and the premier had created a cross-government team to work with Atlantic on solutions. Those include providing the company with additional fuel supply options.
It said BC Hydro had also amended its electricity purchase agreement with the company in October to give the working group more time to come up with long-term solutions to the affordable fibre-supply problem.
In the meantime, city officials remain on edge at the prospect of losing a key component of their local economy.
“Atlantic Power is getting close to saying ‘that’s it, we’re gone,'” Nelson said.
“I am very fearful.”
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