This article originally appeared on The Tyee.
Cameron Hill will never forget the cold October night in 1975 when a diesel generating plant breakdown cut all power to Hartley Bay’s homes and water treatment. Completely isolated 140 kilometres south of Prince Rupert on British Columbia’s north coast, the village and home community of the Gitga’at First Nation (pronounced “Git-Gat”) was completely on its own.
“Six weeks later, the power was still out,” says Hill, 47, now the school principal and a 20-year Gitga’at band councillor. More than anything else, he remembers watching his family’s winter supply of salmon, halibut, moose and berries defrost and spoil in their multiple freezers.
The great blackout was a defining moment for Hartley Bay. Within three years, a plan emerged to build a small hydro project to replace their unreliable, dirty and expensive diesel, which like everything else, they can’t source themselves and must be shipped four hours from Prince Rupert.
So it’s amazing that, nearly four decades on, the community vision for clean energy remains in limbo. It certainly hasn’t been for lack of effort: the Gitga’at have successfully navigated the complexities of multiple government bureaucracies, lined up millions in loans and grants, and were even awarded an energy purchase agreement in 2014. But it has not been enough. The hydro project is stalled, forcing Gitga’at leaders like Hill to face another generation burning the same dirty fuel.