Yukon’s Energy Future: Will we be damning our rivers to sell electricity to B.C. once climate change dries their rivers up?

Since the Faro mine closed down, Yukon has been in the privileged position of having surplus electricity generating capacity. We have a pretty hefty diesel generating capacity (39 Megawatts out of a total of 116), but under normal conditions, the great majority of our electricity comes from hydro – the “green” energy – so we can run our hot tubs, computers, and all those other gizmos that we buy as good little consumers, without the guilty thought that we are churning out green house gases in the process.

Sure, there are other environmental costs to hydroelectricity, but in our case, as long as we are careful about what we do to the water levels on Aishihik and Marsh Lakes and Mayo Dam, and we manage not to wipe out too many fish or their spawning areas, we can light up our houses like Christmas trees from October to March with a pretty clear conscience. It would be a different matter, though, if we started coming close to consuming all the electricity we can currently generate. Then we would have to start looking around for brand new generating capacity and – given that for Yukon Energy (YEC) electricity seems pretty exclusively to mean hydro – that would probably mean messing up another lake or (kiss the salmon goodbye) even damming a river. Then we would have to choose between capping our energy use (has any jurisdiction actually done that yet?) or greatly increasing the environmental cost of our electricity – in one big jump. Judging from what other jurisdictions have done so far, we would probably be just like all the others and drown half of the territory rather than curb energy use, but maybe I’m just being uncharitable. I’m sure there’d be years of hand-wringing and angst before we got the concrete pouring. By the way, if anyone needs a quick backgrounder on why damming rivers for power is such a rotten idea, go to the International Rivers Network and click on their “about rivers and dams” link and then the impacts link (http://www.irn.org/basics/ard/index.php?id=dams.html), and you’ll soon get the idea.

Now, though we’re not there yet, a couple of factors are pushing us closer to that point. Firstly, increased mining activity: We are going to build a transmission line from Carmacks to Stewart and use it to sell power to Minto mine (currently using their own diesel generators). The Carmacks Copper project also might fire up and turn out to be another big electricity consumer. Secondly, we’re using more and more electricity domestically. So, despite the fact that Faro mine closed down and left us with all that extra capacity, we’re now getting closer to using it all up.

Some of the more paranoid conspiracy theorists have been whispering furtively of late that Yukon Energy has Big Plans to increase capacity, so I went and looked up their web site and found their 20-year resource plan (http://www.yukonenergy.ca/environment/reports/resource/ ).

It all looks very sensible, and I failed to get that Halloween creeping flesh sensation I was looking for. There, laid out, are the four capital projects YEC is hoping will keep our energy balance in the black for a long while yet: i) overhauling or replacing the diesel generators at the Whitehorse facility, ii) putting in a third turbine at Aishihik Lake, iii) increasing the amount of water it can draw off Marsh Lake for power generation, and iv) building that Carmacks-Stewart line – that will not just provide YEC power to Minto mine, but will also link the South Yukon and North Yukon grids. The third one (Marsh Lake draw down increase) has been dropped in the face of opposition from locals. So, when it comes to new hydroelectric capacity, we’re just looking at the third turbine at Aishihik Lake. Yes there is a bit of an environmental issue there, as YEC initially wanted to keep lake water levels as low as they can get away with, so that in a good, high precipitation year, YEC would be able to generate more power rather than having to spill any excess water without getting any juice out of it. DFO’s authorization, spurred on by Champaigne and Aishihik First Nation’s traditional knowledge and their own biologists meanwhile, legally insists that they operate at the upper end of their permitted draw down regime, so they don’t (hem hem) wipe out the white fish. But that aside, it all looks pretty benign.

Tucked away in Part Three of the 20 year plan – Appendix B – are the hydroelectric project options that have been considered, ranging from very small to very large. Given that the talk until now had been meeting domestic demand plus a couple of big but not huge mines, and that no-one as far as I know has been talking about selling Yukon power down South, I wasn’t too interested in the section on the 60 Megawatt + projects… until, that is, I saw the words “…have the potential to service most or all of the potential Alaska Highway Pipeline loads.”. Now that gave me the creeps. Just how much electricity is this pipelines going to need? I thought it was just a couple of pumping stations.

Or are we talking about selling electricity to our southern neighbours? Currently climate change geeks are predicting that B.C.’s hydro generating capacity is going to take a huge hit over the next decade or two, as snow packs deplete and summer rains dry up.

The three ‘Very Large’ projects considered, by the way, are i) damming the Pelly at Granite Canyon, ii) damming the Stewart at Fraser Falls, and iii) damming the Yukon downstream of Whitehorse (maybe at Five Finger Rapids, who knows, but if a tour operator can build a suspension bridge to nowhere on the Skagway road and charge people over $18 to see it, anything is possible).

OK everyone, stay calm, and say slowly after me, “ It Ain’t Gonna Happen”. Good. That feels better, doesn’t it? That’s just what YEC say, too. They probably mean it. I’m just winding you up. Honest.

Now, for those of you who have stuck with this article this far, I will begin to get to the point. If YEC has no intention of doing any large or very large hydro projects on hitherto un-messed-up rivers, how come during the Umbrella Final Agreement negotiations YTG insisted on retaining land notations on 10 of the big hydro project sites they studied back in the 80’s?

Enter Intergroup Consultants.

This company was hired by Yukon Energy to help them write the 20-year resource plan. They have been involved in very big hydro projects for 30-odd years, especially in Manitoba (Intergroup is based in Winnipeg). They were closely involved with the Northern Flood Agreement between Manitoba Hydro and the Cree peoples of Northern Manitoba, which led to the flooding of large expanses of land, massive environmental degradation, displacement of people, the destruction of the native-run commercial fisheries, soaring suicide rates… and they are retained as lobbyists for the Manitoba Industrial Power Users Group in submissions to the Manitoba Utilities Board.

The Northern Flood Agreement was (and continues to be) a very ugly affair in which Intergroup played (and continues to play) a central role. What are they doing advising on our energy policy for the next 20 years? Any guesses? Judging by Intergroup’s track record, and the fact that they are economists working mostly for big industry, it’s more likely to be about Big Money than about Yukoners’ interests.

Xcel Energy, of Minnesota, is the biggest customer for electricity from the Northern Manitoba hydro project. Manitoba Hydro markets it as “green energy”. One lady from Minnesota who buys her electricity from Xcel started wondering how green her electricity really was (you should see the Xcel billboards, they really make you go all misty-eyed) and took a trip to South Indian Lake, Manitoba to find out. She was so horrified that she ended up making a film about it, called “Green Green Water” (check it out at http://www.greengreenwater.com/index.php).

Whilst you’re on the web, have a look at another couple of things that might intrigue you about Intergroup. Firstly, if you go to the Yukon Energy website and then click on their contract registry, and then click on consulting contracts, you will see all the consulting contracts signed, by year. Intergroup Consultants are there, at the top of the list. And what was the contract about? “Support services regarding hydro reconnaissance activities”. Now say after me “It’ll … Never … Happen”.

What else have they done for YEC recently? Well, they’ve done a lot of work on… oh yes… the Carmacks-Stewart Transmission line and, back in ’05, something called “Resource Planning”. A little vague, if you ask me – it probably refers to that little job they had writing that 20-year plan. Another thing to note; no contract prices (let alone any other details) are entered in the registry, even though YEC say they will make public the details of every contract over $5,000. And these are ‘sole source’ contracts, with no tender process to worry about.

Now folks, I’m not wanting to get you all agitated, so do please practice your breathing exercises, and don’t worry. I’m sure It… Will… Never… Happen , but just in case, well, you heard it here first.

Eating Crow Already

Well, I said that if the Ombudsman's office did not call back to cancel the meeting I eventually wrangled, I would apologise... Sorry.

I did indeed meet with someone at the Ombudsman's office. It was a pretty anodyne affair, but largely because the act under which the Ombudsman operates is so focused on responding to individuals' grievances there is little scope to consider broader issues of public interest.

So we spoke largely about whether whistleblower legislation would be useful or could possibly work. More of that later, but for now, let it be known, the Ombudsman's Office did speak to me in the end.

Fear and Loathing in the Civil Service

The Wednesday (November 7th) edition of the Yukon News contained a letter to the editor that sums up the reign of terror that the civil service seems to be living under. From the point of view of the launch of this website, it couldn’t have been better timed. For those of you who missed it, I’m posting sections of it here. The author requested that his name be withheld, and included in his submission a fairly lengthy justification as to why he should wish to remain anonymous. I’d like to congratulate the usually rather docile Yukon News for publishing this, along with the body of the letter itself: I think it makes good reading.
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Editor’s note: Last week, we received this letter on the workers’ advocate firing from a civil servant. The writer despises anonymous letters, and yet he felt strongly he must ask for anonymity.

The reasons for his request said much about the Yukon civil service, both its operation and its state of mind under the current government. And so we’ve printed both.

Fear and loathing in the Yukon civil service

I think anonymous correspondence is the realm of cowards — I have great disdain for it — so let me explain my yellow streak in this situation.

I bounced this off my wife — she said, “Are you walking the plank?”

I bounced this off one guy at work — he said, “These people are criminals and thugs with long memories.”

I bounced it off another guy at work who said, “You are sticking your head up — you risk having someone virtually stand over your shoulder for the rest of your YTG career watching for any slip up — everyone around you can be surfing Facebook all day — but as soon as you go there — BLAM! You are busted!”

I live in a city I want to stay in and all of my non-YTG job options probably pay half the ludicrous salary that I get for the amount of work I actually do. I have at least 10 years to go before I retire and I have a mortgage.

I work in an area where people are carefully selected for promotion and have bullshit jobs crafted for them and then the hiring process carefully managed to ensure they end up in those jobs (PSC may not think it works that way, but if PSC ever came out of their offices they might be very surprised).

The process could be easily reversed.

The primary criteria for promotions seem to be the number of DUIs you have (the more the better). Since I’m not a drinker, my job is already precarious enough. If I keep my head down and shut up they forget I’m there — I get paid every two weeks and everything is cool. But if I get lippy, I can see being out the door in under a year. Two if I have no pride.

I think, realistically, there SHOULD be, and probably is, little risk in me attaching my name to this. But I think there is a little risk and it affects others as well as myself. Sorry. I know where you are coming from. I’d love to put my name behind this — I actually think I did a not-shabby job of writing it (you should have seen draft 1 — that would have got me fired tomorrow!). I just think there is a risk, and I’m too cautious to take that risk at this point in my career/life.
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“Criminals and thugs with long memories”? Our elected officials and senior civil servants?. Truly, we are living in dark times.

Later on in his letter, the author cited the Ombudsman’s office as a possible model for that of the Workers’ Advocate, as a genuinely independent body. Coincidentally, as part of the preparation for setting up this website, I asked for an appointment with the Ombudsman or one of her deputies. When asked what it was about, I explained, “I’m setting up a website dealing with issues relating to accountability in government, particularly with regard to natural resources, and I would like to talk to someone in the Ombudsman’s office about how they see their role, what they see are the major threats and constraints to open government in the Yukon – particularly as it is a small jurisdiction – and also I would like to know whatever happened to the whistle-blower legislation that has been promised by successive governments. Are there circumstances where the public interest trumps confidentiality clauses signed by civil servants?” Very basic, general questions, surely.

This triggered a response of stuttering panic on the part of the Ombudsman’s office. Eventually, a meeting was scheduled, though it was left open as to who was actually going to speak to me. They would call me during the week, they said, to confirm who I would be seeing. That didn’t happen, so on the eve of the meeting, I phoned again and asked. This again was met with nervous vacilation, and I was told they would call back in a few minutes. Soon, sure enough, the phone rang and it was one of the Ombudsman’s deputies. “We’re not sure we would be able to comment on these issues”… “The Ombudsman might be able to say something regarding the Act for which she is directly responsible, but other than that…”, “Have you read last year’s Ombudsman’s report to the legislature?”. The poor woman clearly did not want to talk to me. She said that she was heading to Regina in a couple of days for a meeting, and that she was rather “taken up”, but I had a distinct feeling that being too busy was not the reason. I decided to persist, and she agreed to reschedule the interview for the week after her return from Regina… “In the meantime, I’ll talk again [again?] to the Ombudsman and see where she stands, and if she will be able to comment”.

I fully expect that I will get another phone call next week, to cancel. If not I will gladly eat humble pie and apologize for being so beastly about these obviously nice and concerned people. But what on earth is making them so jittery, and what does all this say about “an independent agency, at arm’s length of government”, whose declared mission is to promote accountability and openness in government? Are these timid folk the firebrands fighting for genuine democracy and open government on our behalf, or have the ‘thugs with long memories’ got to them, too?

So, if there is anyone out there, who works in the Yukon civil service, or any other level of government in the Yukon, who has first hand knowledge of blatant wrong-doing, the anti-democratic pursuit of hidden agendas, abuse of power, corruption, or similar, contact us at Yukon Confidential and give us chapter and verse (and evidence, if possible). No childish whining, please, just facts. We don’t work for the government and are not worried about losing our jobs, so we can get that information out into the public domain. We need you to feed us the info. We won’t divulge our sources. Just make sure you back up your emails and other files of interest stored on YTG servers to a removable storage device before you come to us.

“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.”
Judge John Curran, Dublin, July 10th, 1790, in reference to the mayoral elections.

I’m writing this on Friday 9th, just after reading today's Yukon News. I’m rather disappointed there wasn’t a flurry of correspondence in response to the anonymous letter in the previous edition. I hoped for a mix of righteous bluster from the great and the good, along the lines of “How dare this person… disrespect for our democratic institutions… officials’ powers constantly constrained by democratic checks and balances”, and so on, and on the other hand a torrent of examples of abuse of power, woeful mismanagement, bullying and hidden corporate collusion in government. But nothing. The investing of $36Million’s worth of public money in an obviously dodgy enterprise, in contravention of the YTG finance rules, seems to have taken up all the space for now – well, that is a pretty juicy story, so I can't complain.

We haven’t heard the last of any of this, but it is up to you to speak up.