Another success story has us pretty excited this week.
Last Saturday during their popular family Catch a Trout Day, the Sunshine Coast Salmonid Enhancement Society unveiled a new micro turbine power project.
The project uses three small hydro-electric turbines to generate up to 30,000 kilowatt hours per year of electricity that will be fed back into the BC Hydro grid.
This reduces the cost of operating the hatchery, reduces its carbon footprint and makes it a greener facility — all things that are significantly positive for the hatchery and for the environment.
We first told you about this project in our annual Horizons section in April 2013. At that time the Society was looking to create a project that would be environmentally sustainable, enhance the programs the hatchery was involved in and help save some money.
Enter long-time volunteer Don Petry, who prepared a report that estimated the savings in hydro usage at about 70 per cent or about $3,800 annually after the project’s completion — that’s money that a non-profit society such as this one desperately needs.
Next, Petry and other volunteers continued to do their due diligence, partnered with several companies, local and off-Coast, and reached out for funding from the National Research Council’s IRAP program, the Pacific Salmon Foundation, Vancity, the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation and other Coasters who saw this would be an awesome project to support.
The project is designed to be a demonstration project and a field research site for similar projects such as small hatcheries or other facilities.
So Chapman Creek, if it wasn’t on the map already, is now a testing site for this project and a model for other hatcheries to aspire to.
On Saturday, Petry was honoured for his work on the project and was bestowed an even greater honour when the micro power facility was named the Don Petry Powerhouse.
This project is such a win-win for our community. It brings economic and environmental benefits, the Society saves on overhead costs, the project is unique, and it will garner provincial, national, maybe even international attention (never a bad thing). It will pave the way for potential eco-tourism, and young people will get a chance to learn more about our most precious resource — water. And that’s not a bad thing either.
Speaking of our future youth, up the Coast in Pender Harbour, Jay Walls’ students have just received $2,500 from Evergreen for their in-depth learning about the Sakinaw Lake salmon runs. What started out as an investigation of their mascot, the Sakinaw salmon, exploded into a year-long, hands-on educational experience.
The students also lobbied our MLA and MP when they found out the local DFO office would be closing.
It’s inspiring to see a teacher impassioned about a cause and sharing that passion with his students.
