BC Hydro and the Site C Dam

BC Hydro inflates demand to justify Site C Dam.

Written by Damien Gillis, Wednesday, 28 August 2013

If you take BC Hydro's recently released draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) at face value, you will conclude the following:

1. BC faces a serious power shortage in the coming decades
2. In order to meet this gap, we need a combination of conservation, plus the $8 Billion Site C Dam (sure to cost far more in reality)
3. As a province, we currently need 57,000 gigawatt hours (GWhrs) of electricity per year
4. BC Hydro should and can supply the massive, energy-intensive Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry with public electricity

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Compact video overview of the Fish Lake / Prosperity mine process.

This video outlines the process up to:

18 March 2013

This short film presents an overview of the various Environmental Assessment processes for the New Prosperity Mine, undertaken from the Provincial to Federal level. The perceived and actual thoroughness of the processes are investigated, with a close examination of the cross-fire of debates that ensue.

In the past couple of days, the Review Panel has found Taseko's second attempt to provide the information requested seriously inadequate.

For more detail and the larger perspective, go to The Campaign to protect Teztan Biny.

Doubts about the economic viability of Taseko Mines’ New Prosperity copper-gold proposal at Fish Lake in British Columbia's Chilcotin region.

A GUEST POST BY STEVE MONK.

As a person who has previously worked in the mining industry in the NWT for 15 years, I have serious doubts about the economic viability of Taseko Mines’ New Prosperity copper-gold proposal at Fish Lake.

The major investor in this project, Franco Nevada, is a royalty investment company that makes large returns on investments and options. They have a loan agreement with Taseko whereby Franco Nevada would be in return for 22% of the gold the mine produces at a fixed price of US $400 per ounce. Any difference between this price and the market price of gold would go to paying off the $350 million loan. (The construction costs were projected at $1.3 billion in 2010.)

It is not apparent that Taseko’s feasibility study reflects this reduced income from the fixed price for 22% of the gold going to Franco Nevada.

According to Taseko's feasibility study, the mine would produce just 0.41 gram-per-tonne of gold, which is considered a very low grade ore body. Franco Nevada Chairman Pierre Lassonde, in an interview on Business News Network, stated that companies who pursue mines with an ore body of less than 0.5 gram-per-tonne of gold may find it hard to make money or generate growth. The ore grade of the copper at the site is also very low at 0.23%. This is one of the lowest grade deposits in the world. It is wholly dependent on high copper prices to survive, not the discovery of more ore.

When the price or grade of ore falls and the revenues cease, the operator and its investors, such as the provincial government, are the losers. However, Mr. Lassonde’s company - the royalty holder - would continue to make profits on royalties and options based on the minerals extracted, even when the mine actually loses money.

It is very important that the scope of the project's economic projections be closely examined to determine whether or not environmental risks could be mitigated in the case of premature mine closure or abandonment. In the company’s eagerness to have this project approved and its recently heightened strategy of persuasion and influence at the local level, it is even more crucial that local residents are made aware of the substandard economic realities of a mine at this location.

Steve Monk is an active participant in Friends of Fish Lake

See also:
Fish Lake - Information and Images; the campaign to protect Fish Lake (Teztan Biny)

The Rise of the Salmon People

I tended to picture wild salmon as swimming the oceans - and they do. Just as important is that they swim our rivers too - an iconic and important part of the life, and balance for ecosystems and the creatures, people and cultures that grew up with them.

This movie by Jeremy Williams, released in 2011, documents the time a couple of years ago when thousands were galvanized to respond to "a drastic decline in the Fraser River Sockeye Salmon in 2009". It describes the coming together of long-time salmon advocate, Dr. Alexandra Morton, First Nations communities and other concerned groups to protect the salmon. A large rally was later followed by a group canoeing down the lower Fraser River in the “Paddle for Wild Salmon . . . arriving in Vancouver, along with hundreds of supporters, to address the Cohen Commission, a federal judicial inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser Sockeye".

Rise of the Salmon People from jeremy williams on Vimeo.