from the air

I took a helicopter trip to the north end of Harrison Lake recently to get a tour of a few "run-of-river" Independent Power Projects. I put "run-of-river" in quotations marks because they are in no way run-of-river. The water is diverted to a pipe, which is run under ground for between one and four kilometres to a power station after which it is connected back with the stream.

The projects are lauded by the provincial Liberal government who love IPPs because of the "I". Independent, i.e. private, i.e. not public. The Libs want everything to be privatized and power is a fabulous first step.

The projects are slammed by critics that say, well, lots. The run-of-river B.S. is a start, but there have also been many criticisms of illegal bridge-building and road-making and begging of forgiveness. Privatizing power is another knock on this program as profits in the hands of shareholders naturally ends up as a taxpayers' expense. The fact that Cloudworks—the company behind these six projects and four more they will easily get government support to create—invited up some of us local media means that they think seeing them first hand would force us to give our heads a shake and say, "Golly, how could we criticize this!"

Brilliant idea and it probably worked. And on the other hand, to those opposed to the projects I would ask, "What's your plan for electricity?" If you live in a yurt, kill and gather your own food, then good on you. For the rest of us who enjoy lights and stoves and clean laundry I say, change the routine or pick the lesser of many evils.

Anyway, enough pontificating, these are three pics we didn't run in the paper from that flight. One is of a jet boat cruising into the Harrison River on the flight to the IPPs. One is of a waterfall at the base of what is left of Trethewey Creek before it meets up with the water diverted for the IPP. And the other is just a view of Harrison Mills.

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