Gold River holds faint hope

Andrew A. Duffy
Times Colonist
03 Dec 2004


CREDIT: Deddeda Stemler, Times Colonist
The Green Island Energy site would occupy the old mill facility at Gold River.


COMMENT:The BC Utilities Commission is an unfriendly place for citizens. Lawyers, experts, corporate batboys - these people are more at home in the BCUC's formal regulatory proceedings. That hasn't daunted the folks who live in Nanaimo and on Gabriola Island, and it sure hasn't intimidated the citizens of Gold River, who have filed as intervenors or interested parties in the (deep breath) BCUC review of BC Hydro's application for an Electricity Purchase Agreement with Duke Point Power Partnership.

In September 2003, the BCUC denied BC Hydro's application for the Vancouver Island Generation Project (VIGP). BC Hydro responed with a Call for Tenders (CFT) process to elicit bids for lower-cost power solutions for Vancouver Island. In the CFT, BC Hydro was looking for projects up to 300 MW capacity, and Green Island Energy put in a bid for a 75 MW "biomass" plant to be located in Gold River.

In November 2004, BC Hydro picked its same old VIGP, privatized, reduced in cost (How? That's another question entirely and most of the intervenors in the EPA review are trying to get answers to that very question.), and renamed Duke Point Power (DPP). BC Hydro told Green Island Energy that it just couldn't fit GIE's 75 MW project with others to get the package it needed. GIE is screaming unfair, and indeed, unfair it is.

It is nevertheless wonderful to see the people of Gold River mobilizing around this issue, and taking steps to barge through the doors of the arrogant BC energy club, normally the exclusive domain of BC Hydro, BCUC, Ministry of Energy & Mines, and a few academics and consulting firms - and demanding a voice in energy decisions.

This is not an endorsement of Green Island Energy's Gold River project. Burning garbage is a risky business, fraught with the potential and likelihood of releasing an obscene stew of toxins into the local environment. Rumours persist that GIE would resort to coal from the nearbly Quinsam Mine if other fuels were not available. If or when the GIE project has commercial viability, if not out of the CFT, perhaps in a subsequent call for capacity or energy from BC Hydro, the project itself will have to undergo a rigorous environmental assessment. Unfortunately, in British Columbia today, with the existing Environmental Assessment Act, such an assessment is not likely to happen. In the meantime, go for it, people of Gold River. - Arthur Caldicott

BC Hydro VICFT - Electricity Purchase Agreement link

Green Island Energy's letter of intervention and letter from counsel

The short-term future of Gold River is in the hands of the B.C. Utilities Commission.

When the BCUC meets in January to examine the electricity purchase agreement between B.C. Hydro and the group that intends to build a gas-fired generation plant in Nanaimo, it will in essence be deciding the fate of programs and services available in the mid-Island village.

If the BCUC approves the deal between B.C. Hydro and Duke Point Power Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Macquarie Essential Assets, Pristine Power and a group of private investors, it will all but kill plans to build a thermal generating power plant in Gold River. And in so doing will take away any economic certainty the village of 1,359 may have had.

"There's no question it will have an impact in the short term," said Gold River mayor David Lewis. "Right now in our budget we don't have enough money to run some of our recreation facilities next year.

"At least if (the plant was built in Gold River) it would give us some certainty going forward and we could work around it."

The village had been pinning its hopes on a plan by Green Island Energy to build a biomass-burning plant (fuelled by wood, construction waste and pelleted garbage) on the site of an abandoned pulp mill.

When the mill closed in 1999 it put 300 people out of work. As a result, the village's annual budget was slashed to about $2 million from $6 million.

"We lost 83 per cent of our tax base, our budget has been cut but services haven't really subsided," said Lewis, noting the Green Island plant, rumoured to cost $250 million to build, would replace a good chunk of that lost tax revenue.

It would also provide 30-40 year-round jobs in a town where, according to the 2001 census, there are only 750 jobs.

"And that's significant," said Lewis.

But the Green Island project lost out in the call-for-tender process to Pristine's 252 megawatt, gas-fired power plant to be built at Duke Point in Nanaimo.

If approved by the BCUC, at a cost of $280 million, the Pristine plant would replace the supposedly dead-and-buried Vancouver Island Generation Project, a 265-megawatt plant Hydro intended to build on the same site at a cost of $370 million.

That project was originally rejected by the BCUC as too large and costly a way to make up the Island's energy shortfall, prompting the call for tenders.

Lewis says the BCUC hearings -- to take place in Nanaimo Jan. 12-15 at the Coast Bastion Inn -- are the last chance to overturn the deal.

And he argues it should be overturned not just because Gold River needs its plant, but because it's in the public interest.

"We feel the decision Hydro made was biased in favour of the Duke Point project, but there is a low-cost alternative," he said, adding he felt the Gold River project wasn't evaluated because it did not fit into Hydro's narrow criteria.

He's hoping the BCUC will look into that tender process as well during the hearings and force Hydro to reconsider its decision.

"I'm comfortable and confident the commission panel will uphold the public interest," he said.

B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Elisha Moreno says the utility will not comment on any of the projects or proponents until after the hearing in January as it would compromise the process. However, she did say that on a cost-effectiveness basis the Duke Point project was the clear winner.

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