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LETTER: The downside of Site C

Bull trout don’t like fish ladders. This is a problem for BC Hydro in the construction of the Site C dam.
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Bull trout don’t like fish ladders. This is a problem for BC Hydro in the construction of the Site C dam. So they came up with a solution. They plan to stun the fish (bull trout and arctic grayling)when they reach the new dam on their way up the river to spawn. Then they will put them in aerated tanks, and drive them upstream to the spawning grounds.

Of course on their way back downstream, they will be on their own, which means 40 per cent of the large fish, and 10 per cent of the small ones will die going through the turbines. It seems pretty clear that it won’t take long to eliminate all the big ones, and maybe a little longer to eliminate the species altogether in that stretch of river. That sounds like a typical BC Hydro plan.Soon we will have plenty of electric power to cook the fish, but no fish to cook, and no potatoes to make the chips either, since we are flooding the fertile bottom land.

It wouldn’t be so bad if we really needed to build this dam, but the truth is we do not. The best we could hope for is that the power will be used to liquefy natural gas, which we have fracked out of the ground, likely causing earthquakes, and polluting our ground water, in order to load it on ships in the inside passage destroying our eelgrass salmon nurseries, and possibly spilling out and polluting the once fabulous Pacific ocean, so that we can have the jobs doing so, and the corporations can fill their pockets with cash. Barring that we will have to sell it to California at a loss, or possibly to Alberta, if our premier will stop picking fights with them long enough to talk a deal.

I want my Beautiful British Columbia back. It is time the NDP got back to its democratic roots and presented a real, viable alternative. If they can’t do that they should step aside and make room for some other alternative. The “British Columbia Beauty Party” has a nice ring, don’t you think?

Rod Retzlaff, Glade