Site C Dam

In April 2010, the government announced that it will proceed with the highly controversial Site C dam mega-project in the Peace River Valley.  The Site C dam would flood almost 20 percent of class one to three farmland in the Peace River Valley, according to a study by the West Moberly First Nations and the Peace Valley Environmental Association. The dam’s destruction of wildlife values is also cause for alarm, given the critical role of the Peace River’s islands and wetlands in wildlife breeding and wintering cycles.

Site C fails to meet minimim international standards for large dam construction. Although the BC government is presenting the $6.5 billion hydro project as a "clean energy project", Site C would increase annual greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia by almost 150,000 tonnes. The project's carbon footprint derives from construction emissions, as well as emissions created by the flooded boreal forest as it decays. Much of the power from Site C will go to environmentally destructive fracking developments in B.C.’s northeast. Natural gas from fracking in turn will power the extraction of oil from Alberta’s tar sands.