TMTV/BCTV Kootenays - RALLY IN KASLO OVER CONTROVERSIAL GLACIER/HOWSER PRIVATE POWER PROJECT More Than A Thousand People Turn Out To Protest Private Power Project In Kootenays June 24, 2009 TMTV for Global TV - People from all over the Kootenays and beyond rallied in Kaslo last night. Airs tonight (Wednesday) at 6PM on Global TV -copyright 2009
In the small town of Kaslo, population of just over a 1,000 people, more than 1,100 people turned out to protest a contentious private power project. The 100MW Glacier/Howser project, the largest of its kind in proposed for the Kootenays, has been dogged by controversy due the tremendous negative impact it would on a unique bull trout population, plans to permanently divert water from four
creeks and a refusal by the government to host a public meeting in Nelson.
You can run but you cant hide in the West Kootenay, said Lee-Ann Unger, West Kootenay EcoSociety. They tried to avoid public input by avoiding a meeting in a more populated area and it simply didnt work. In some cases people traveled for more than 100 kilometres to stand up for wild rivers and to tell the proponent, AXOR Inc, and the province that the project is not wanted, not needed and not green.
So many people turned up at the public meeting for the Glacier/Howser private hydro project at the towns school gym that it exceed recommended seated room capacity. The proponents and the provincial Environmental Assessment Office were grilled repeatedly about the lack of environmental rigor in the assessment process, potential impact to species at risk and the construction of 92kms of new transmission line through sensitive ecological areas.
The turn out at tonights meeting illustrates unequivocally that people are solidly opposed to this environmentally destructive private hydro project, said Unger. The overwhelming take home message for AXOR and the provincial government is that the people of the Kootenays are not going to tolerate this project and the lack of democracy in the process around it.
Many local governments and organizations within the West Kootenay region had requested that a public meeting also be held in Nelson due to its centrality and accessibility to the majority of people living within the West Kootenays. The provincial Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) and AXOR Inc rejected these requests out of hand.
AXOR Inc, under the subsidiary Purcell Green Power, resubmitted their application for the Glacier/Howser private hydro project on May 6th after it was rejected last year by the EAO. The EAO accepted the revised application late last week and is now moving into the final public input period for the project.
Details from the Glacier/Howser private hydro project description show that it includes the construction of 92kms of new power lines stretching from the West to the East Kootenay. These power lines would cut through areas of old growth forest, old growth management areas off limits to logging companies and important grizzly bear habitat.
It also includes the damming and diverting of water from 5 creeks Glacier, Howser, Berhman, Suck, Birnam into a combined 16 km of tunnels large enough to drive a dump truck through. Unlike most other projects, the water diverted would never return to the original creeks, leaving up to 12km of both streams with dramatically reduced water flow. There are concerns about the negative impact this would have on important aquatic habitat including spawning ground for a genetically unique species of bull trout.
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