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Readers should be wary

LETTERS

Editor:

As the wheels show signs of falling off Christy Clark’s LNG “debt free B.C.” bandwagon, the Premier is turning her megaproject fetish towards building the Site C Dam, which will flood the Peace River Valley and destroy substantial class one agricultural lands. 

The high financial and environmental cost of Site C explains why it has been under consideration for some 50 years and not yet built.  The current estimate of $8.8 billion could easily double if other Liberal megaproject cost overruns such as for the Port Mann/Highway 1 widening, BC Place roof replacement, Northwest Transmission Line, Vancouver Convention Centre and South Fraser Perimeter Road are any gauge. That would cause the cost of electricity for residential and commercial accounts to soar.

There are better and cheaper ways to meet B.C.’s energy needs, such as conservation and renewable energy technologies — wind, solar, geothermal and tidal — that do not carry the financial or environmental costs of Site C. BC Hydro’s mandate should be expanded to explore and develop those options in cooperation with local communities.

Building Site C is not a done deal. There are numerous legal obstacles that could stop it and it has yet to earn the social licence among the majority of British Columbians in order to proceed.

Readers should be wary of the newly minted BC Citizens for Green Energy. A self-declared volunteer group created by people close to the BC Liberal Party, they characterize themselves as passionate, right-of-centre BCers who strongly agree with industry and government on energy policy. Priding themselves in getting letters to local newspapers published, they are responsible for the three pro-Site C letters of Jan. 2, which also appeared in numerous other B.C. weeklies.

Jef Keighley, Halfmoon Bay