$360,000 spent to promote dam project

PEACE RIVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - A splashy event featuring Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell trumpeting a megaproject against the backdrop of the mighty WAC Bennett dam on the Peace River cost more than $360,000 to produce, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

At the April event, Mr. Campbell announced the province’s decision to take the proposal for the massive Site C dam to the next stage, including an environmental review. The event raised eyebrows at the time over the cost of bringing planeloads of politicians, reporters and “power pioneers” – retired employees who had worked on earlier hydro projects, including the WAC Bennett dam – to Hudson’s Hope for the media announcement.

Detailed invoices show BC Hydro spent thousands on flights, hotel rooms, rental cars and catering to hold the event, which was coordinated by Vancouver-based Pace Group Communications.

The costs reflect the significance of the announcement, especially to the Peace River region, BC Hydro spokeswoman Susan Danard said.

“This is a project that, although it will have provincial benefits, it is going to most directly benefit and affect people from Peace region,” Ms. Danard said. “So that was the rationale for holding the event in the north, at an existing site already built just upstream at the WAC Bennett dam.”

A spokeswoman in the premierÂ’s office directed questions to BC Hydro, saying the crown corporation put on the event.

The costs are excessive and vastly out of keeping with what was actually announced, said NDP opposition energy critic John Horgan.

“When you go back to the gist of the actual announcement, it wasn’t a groundbreaking, it wasn’t the announcement of a power purchasing agreement, it wasn’t letting of contracts for inevitable construction,” Mr. Horgan said. “It was moving to the third of a five-stage consultation process.’

Such a procedural step could have been announced without the fanfare and the expense, he added.

“It [the April event] was an attempt to change the channel and it cost us a third of a million dollars,” Mr. Horgan said, adding that the event was held as the provincial budget debate was in full swing. “And that is outrageous when we are looking at billion-dollar deficits.”

The proposed Site C project would be the third dam on the Peace River in northeast B.C. First proposed in the 1970s, itÂ’s been on and off the government agenda since. The Liberal government began reviewing the project in 2004 and has been studying it in earnest since 2007.

In April, the province said Site C would create nearly 8,000 jobs during construction and up to 35,000 direct and indirect jobs through all stages of the project. If built, it is expected to create an 83-kilometre reservoir and flood more than 5,000 hectares of land and could begin generating electricity by 2020.

The project is subject to an environmental review.

A preliminary estimate put the cost of the dam at between $5-billion and $6.6-billion, but those figures were based on design work from the 1980s, and a revised estimated is expected to be higher.

Invoices for the event were obtained through a freedom-of-information request. Costs included flights, courier services, hotel accommodation and $918.75 worth of name badges and lanyards. The accounts included a $2,100 credit for airfare that some media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, paid to attend the event.