The Editor,
Someone, please explain how BC Hydro has the right to prepare land and infrastructure for a dam it supposedly does not yet have permission to construct, flooding land it does not yet have permission to flood. A future defence of “look how much money, time and effort we’ve already invested in this project” is not going to cut it.
Most people in B.C. do not realize how many dams already exist on this province’s lakes and rivers, from Okanagan Lake east and north of Revelstoke — Kinbasket Lake, Revelstoke Lake, the Arrow Lakes, Kootenay Lake and many small minor lakes and their tributaries, all leading into the Columbia River system, all part of a treaty with the Americans and geared to their water and power needs — and it ruined the salmon fishery. This list does not include the biggest dammed lake in B.C. already on the Peace River system, Williston Lake. Is Site C really for us or for the Americans?
People of Metro Vancouver, get out this summer and see for yourselves what’s already happened in the past 100 years in your province. Go to Barkerville, see Hell’s Gate, stop at Revelstoke Dam. From building a railway that catastrophically affected the salmon fishery, to poor logging and mining practices, we live with the sometimes ill-conceived decisions of our predecessors to this very day.
This is the best place on Earth. We need to be treading far more carefully.
Janet Klopp, Coquitlam
