Just give the problem to someone else
Electricity arguments have gone from neighbourhood to neighbourhood
Les Leyne
Special to the Times Colonist
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Everyone is familiar with the NIMBY syndrome, but we need a new acronym to describe the social phenomenon that's been driving the Vancouver Island power issue.
It's more than just "Not In My Back Yard." It's more like "Use Somebody Else's Back Yard" -- USEBY. Or UNBY -- "Use the Neighbour's Back Yard."
That's what killed the first proposal to deal with the looming electricity shortfall on Vancouver Island -- a natural gas-fired generating plant near Port Alberni.
B.C. Hydro and a partner teamed to do a joint venture deal, but the project stalled when the city wouldn't give the required zoning approval. The prevailing view at the time can be summed up as SINBY -- "Stick It in Nanaimo's Back Yard."
Hydro moved down the road to Duke Point, outside of Nanaimo, and started over with a different partner. To make a long story short, after several years in the approval process, B.C. Hydro got to within one yard of the goal line and then gave up.
There were several factors involved in the expensive surrender, but one of the drivers was the determined opposition from a citizens group that fought the proposed generating plant in every forum that was available.
They didn't just oppose a gas-fired plant, though. They had a constructive alternative. And it was a classic example of moving the problem somewhere else on the grid.
The Island-based citizens' coalition enthusiastically endorsed the proposal that now has Tsawwassen residents ready to storm the barricades -- an upgrade of existing transmission lines.
"By replacing and upgrading the existing power supply, Vancouver Islanders would continue to benefit from reliable, clean, renewable power from B.C.'s hydroelectric dams and other generation," wrote a director of the Georgia Strait Crossing Concerned Citizens Coalition.
The group said upgrading the lines has been a preferred option to the natural gas strategy within Hydro for many years.
"B.C. Hydro should, with all due haste, replace and upgrade the existing electrical transmission lines that link Vancouver Island to the rest of the province," a director of the group wrote in an environmental newsletter in 2003.
The coalition held diligently to that position and advocated it wherever possible for a number of years.
So that's exactly what the transmission corporation set out to do after the Duke Point plan was abandoned. The result so far, of course, is a replay of the earlier arguments, just in a different neighbourhood.
This time it's Tsawwassen residents who are the concerned citizens.
They mounted a vociferous campaign against the new transmission lines, saying they're "unreasonable, unsafe, inadequate ... unreasonably discriminatory."
They've showed up at public meetings where all the concerns boiled into one big self-reinforcing stew of public outrage.
There was avid discussion of all the illnesses supposedly caused by electromagnetic fields, (the project is well within World Health Organization limits), there were tears and anguished apologies to children for subjecting them to all the alleged dangers from the lines already in place.
The fact the old transmission lines have followed a right-of-way through the community that's been in place for 50 years, which is a lot longer than most of the concerned citizens have been there, was downplayed.
The B.C. Utilities Commission released a 299-page decision last week rejecting all their arguments. It said the lines will be safe, they're the cheapest, most effective alternative and they should go ahead.
It just means the status quo in Tsawwassen and south Delta will prevail.
Old transmission lines will be replaced by new ones, some of which may or may not go underground.
Meanwhile, people in the Gulf Islands fought their own battle against the transmission lines, mounting an impressive, well-reasoned argument as to why a completely different proposal crossing from Port Angeles should be picked.
No doubt some of the opponents will head to court now, and then chain themselves to the power poles, as promised in the Lower Mainland. Maybe they'll win the day and this project, too, will collapse.
It would be a classic example of people with the best of intentions defending their own turf against the chance it will be used for the greater good which, from my selfish viewpoint, is keeping the lights on here.
Even if the project proceeds, there will be a one-year period -- starting October, 2007 -- when the Island is officially in a state of emergency management when it comes to power. Any routine failure in the system in that year could develop into a full-scale blackout.
B.C. Hydro bears a lot of responsibility for letting it get to this state. But the continual efforts to push the problem somewhere else on the grid were also in play throughout.
Most of the media coverage of the BCUC decision on BCTC-VITR is at
http://www.sqwalk.com/current/000793.html