Tag: Site "C"

Why Site C must be stopped, Wendy Holm [Consulting Agrologist], Special to the Vancouver Sun, July 28, 2014

…in the face of overwhelming evidence, the B.C. government and its private sector partners seem quite content to throw tomorrow under the bus and press ahead with the construction of Site C — economics and the public interest be damned.

Why? …In part, it’s about money: there are lots of significant piggies ’round the taxpayer trough that will make big bucks building it. In part, it’s about leverage: saddled with Site C’s high-priced power, BC Hydro will hemorrhage red ink, fuelling calls for its privatization and, as such, delivering the vision of investors.

And, in part, it may also be about the water itself. Once impounded behind the dam, the previously free-flowing water of B.C.’s Peace River becomes a NAFTA commodity if BC Hydro is privatized and American investors are involved. …Also interestingly, Site C Dam is smack where it belongs to support the Kuiper, NAWAPA and Grand Prairie schemes for continental water sharing. As water becomes increasingly scarce, the ridiculous becomes profitable…

Water and Free Trade: The Mulroney Government’s Agenda for Canada’s Most Precious Resource, Wendy Holm

WATER FROM THE NORTH: NATURE, FRESHWATER, AND THE NORTH AMERICAN WATER AND POWER ALLIANCE, Thesis Abstract, Andrew W. Reeves, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, 2009:

…Drafted to address the anxiety of perceived ecoscarcity regarding water shortages in the early 1960s, NAWAPA [North American Water and Power Alliance] emerged after a century of increasingly large‐scale diversion projects, and seemed a logical continuation of such grandiose, “jet‐ age” type thinking. It proposed to re‐engineer the North American landscape to provide water from the North to the arid Southwest…

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Executive Summary

Canada has twenty per cent of the planet’s total fresh water supply. Canada’s water wealth raises the possibility of shipping water in bulk, through tankers or pipelines, to regions suffering from drought. On the one hand, bulk water exports could be an economic boon for Canada and a possible solution to the rising concerns over global water security…

Canada can engage in sustainable and responsible bulk water exports if it implements necessary legal and regulatory reforms. First, Canada’s treaties should characterize bulk water exports as a “good” for purposes of international trade and investment law…