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An NDP provincial government would place a moratorium on IPPs: Dix

BC party leader will review existing contracts
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The leader of British Columbia's New Democrats has given his strongest indication yet that he would impose a moratorium on new Independent Power Projects (IPP) in the province's rivers should his party form the next government.

The NDP is riding high after polls in February indicated that around 45 per cent of voters would choose them.

NDP leader Adrian Dix told journalist Rafe Mair in a recent interview that IPPs needed reconsideration.

"I don't hesitate to say that we have a different approach (compared to the ruling Liberal Party)... that we're going to be putting a moratorium on and reviewing those contracts, but the question would be what are the conditions by which a rotten contract could be broken?"

Dix also wanted to see BC Hydro "back in the business of producing power so it is public power, not private power." He called the state of the utility and the billion dollars spent on the smart meters program "a massive scandal" undertaken by the current Liberal government of Christy Clark.

"(The IPP program) is a very serious situation. In many cases contracts have been signed that are not positive for British Columbia. The government excluded many of these contracts from the BCUC (B.C. Utilities Commission), so we have to review all these contracts," he said.

As well, those projects at the application stage would come under review by an NDP government.

"And we don't know even now what we're going to inherit in 2013, what contracts will be signed between now and then," he said.

Dix said it is too early to embrace the idea of buying out existing contracts.

"Buying them out will have costs. You have to act in the public interest... this means, sometimes, not being ideological but being practical," Dix said.

"We think this has had huge costs and every rate payer in B.C. is going be paying the cost for years to come for a set of bad deals."

Nigel Protter is a Pemberton-based consultant to IPP developer Regional Power, proponent of the Ryan River Hydro Project. His work includes looking at sustainable development potentials in resource projects and helping companies in the resource industry, including those run by First Nations, to attain realistic goals in sustainability through industry.

"I'm strictly apolitical, both in my work with aboriginal people and with respect to Liberal vs. NDP," he said.

Renewable energy projects across a spectrum of technologies is the best way to dispense with carbon energy and greenhouse gases, Protter added.

"Adrian Dix and his team know very well what the reality is, they're not stupid and, of course, Mike Harcourt of the NDP initiated the IPP industry in British Columbia. I think the Liberals did a good job managing it and I think we have the best regulatory environment in the world in B.C. and in Canada, though that's not saying it's perfect," he said.

Protter said his clients would be frustrated by any moratorium on IPPs brought in by a NDP government in Victoria.

"I think they're going to be jaded. Of course, what else can a guy like that (Dix) do? He's got to appease his constituents, but in the end, sustainable development logic tells us that there's always a price to pay for anything that humans do, including renewable energy sources. There's always going to be impacts."

Cumulative impacts are usually seen as negative, but there are also positive cumulative impacts, Protter said.

"The more of IPPs we do, the better it gets. The better the renewable energy industry gets in terms of the technology advancing and the projects themselves, the cheaper it gets," he said.

"So if Adrian Dix has any kind of vision, or Christy Clark, they'll look a little more into the future and not sacrifice their souls to populism, which is what they are in a race to the bottom for, right now."

The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) has been a kind of ground zero for the IPP program in British Columbia. Bill 30, passed in 2006 to remove local governments' zoning control over projects built on Crown land, was nicknamed the "SLRD bill" after the SLRD tried to prevent the Ashlu River IPP. The Resort Municipality of Whistler and District of Squamish were also against the bill.

Currently, there are dozens of IPP projects either established or seeking approval in the region. The SLRD's policy on IPP development was set in 2003 and created 15 positions for the region including the need for all projects to require site specific rezoning, and being evaluated against SLRD policies and community interests. Bill 30 effectively removed this.

Like Dix, Susan Gimse, the chairperson of the SLRD, said established business arrangements for IPPs would be difficult to get out of and potentially costly.

"My preference would be for the provincial government to look at increasing their monitoring and enforcement of independent power projects. Is there an adequate level of monitoring? Are there resources there for this?" she asked.

"I won't speak to Adrian Dix's comments about reviewing existing contracts, but what I do know is that we've seen a lot of these projects in our corridor. Some we've added input to as local government... as for future IPP projects, as a result of Bill 30, local government no longer has the ability to influence what these projects look like. That is removed."

Gimse called this unfortunate.

"Local government really is the closest order of government to the people on the ground."

FOI request shows run-of-river problems for fish

Separate freedom of information requests filed by The Vancouver Sun and the Wilderness Committee environmental group have revealed the concerns of federal fisheries biologists over wildly fluctuating water-flow levels from the Capital Power run-of-river hydro plant in the Mamquam River near Squamish.

In August 2010, biologists assembled at the river for swift-water safety training, but instead found young steelhead dying, the water they normally swam in having run dry. Federal scientists wrote to Capital Power in September 2011 about 19 other incidents in the previous 12 months.

Other water-flow incidents, on Ashlu Creek in 2010 and 2011, led to salmon and trout fry being stranded and dying. The Ashlu project was built by Ledcor Power Inc. and is now owned by Quebec-based Innergex.

Neither Innergex nor Capital Power have been charged.

More than 3,000 pages of documents outlining these incidents and water-flow problems killing fish in other run-of-river projects around B.C. were obtained by the newspaper and the Wilderness Committee.

The dead fish and fry numbered in the dozens in each case, across several species including trout and salmon. Among other things, the pages show the frustrations of federal and provincial staff with the ongoing problems.

The federal fisheries department said it was developing monitoring procedures to improve their ability to assess project impacts on fish. For their part, representatives of the industry pointed to fewer impacts on the environment than traditional BC Hydro projects, as well as riparian and river projects they've initiated.

Following the emergence of the water-flow problems, the Wilderness Committee called for a moratorium on run-of-river IPPs.