Manitoba Hydro Really Wants New Dams

Red River ice jam, in 2009. Screencap via.

As the coldest winter in Manitoba’s recent history grinds interminably onward, Manitoba Hydro, the province’s publicly owned energy provider, has been raking in all kinds of bucks. According to the public utility’s recent quarterly report, the past nine months of Hydro’s net income was $72 million, thanks to a combination of high domestic use and third-quarter energy exports to the tune of $338 million. During the same nine-month period in 2012-13, Hydro had a net loss of $38 million.

On the coldest goddamn day of the year, when media around the world mocked Winnipeg for being “colder than Mars,” the Winnipeg Free Press reported that Manitobans set a provincial record for electrical demand, burning through a whopping 4,632 megawatts (MW) as temperatures plummeted past -50C in some parts of the province. While Manitoba Hydro’s total provincial generating capacity sits at 5,675 MW, Hydro is not hesitating to use these numbers to its advantage as it tries to win approval for its current wet dream projects in the hinterland of northern Manitoba: the Keeyask and Conawapa dams.

The public utility released a series of pamphlets last week detailing the province’s expected energy needs over the next 20 years, predicting a “shortfall of dependable energy by 2023,” and hyping hydroelectric power as a better alternative to competing sources like natural gas. Economic, environmental, and social benefits were also extolled.

At the same time, Manitoba Hydro is undergoing hearings with the Clean Environment Commission and the Public Utilities Board in an attempt to convince Manitobans that these two massive developments along the Nelson River—which combined would generate over 2,000 MW of “clean, renewable” power—are a no-brainer. But critics and concerned First Nations believe these developments could cause more economic, environmental, and social hardships in the north than they would benefit.

“I absolutely do not believe they are necessary,” Peter Kulchyski, a professor at the University of Manitoba and a regulatory intervener on behalf of the Concerned Fox Lake Grassroots Citizens against proposed Hydro developments, told VICE. Kulchyski believes that the proposed dams intended use is purely for export purposes. The market itself for that energy is precarious at best, with hydraulic fracturing opening up increasing stores of cheap natural gas in North Dakota and other would-be client states. “The result of fracking is that [southern buyers] don’t need the power.”

Kulchyski isn’t the only public voice questioning the need for these developments. In December, Larry Kusch and Bruce Owens of the Free Press wrote about current trends in US energy consumption towards natural gas, and came to the conclusion that if these trends continue, there will be no need for Conawapa. However, they do acknowledge that Keeyask is as good as a done deal, and could to be up and running by 2021.

As for environmental impacts, Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government have always sold the public on hydroelectricity as a “green” alternative to natural gas or coal generated power. And in the face of widespread fracking and oil sands development, the argument is an easy one to make. You don’t have to blast the substrata with a deadly chemical cocktail or turn huge sections of forest into a hellish moonscape to get power from a hydro dam. But hydroelectric development is far from environmentally neutral.

Members of the Fox Lake First Nation, one of four First Nations who would become partners with Hydro in the Keeyask development, have already seen irreparable changes to their traditional territory.

“Generations before us witnessed the unspoiled beauty of Fox Lake,” Avery Wilkie, a youth delegate from Fox Lake First Nation, told the Clean Environment Commission on December 10, 2013. “But we haven't. We have only seen the after effects each dam leaves behind.”

Some of the effects of previous Hydro developments on waterways in northern Manitoba include polluted drinking water; loss of fish and wildlife habitat; along with unnaturally fluctuating water levels that lead to increased rates of erosion of banks which makes travel on the Nelson, and other rivers, unsafe. The proposed dams would not only impact the Nelson River, but would also flood nearby trap lines used for generations, and impact volatile woodland caribou habitat and endangered sturgeon spawning areas, among other key species.

“If you count the roads and the increased traffic on the roads, the quarries, the construction campsites themselves, the transmission lines, the transformer stations, the garbage dumps and waste disposal, it’s ridiculous,” Kulchyski told VICE. “The traffic alone will scare wildlife away.”

“If Keeyask has to be built,” Wilkie told the CEC, “build it so damage to our land and water is not so adversely affected to our people.”

Hydro, of course, promises to mitigate any environmental disturbance as a result of development. But so do developers in the oil sands.

Economic and environmental impacts may be relatively straightforward and quantifiable, but the social impacts on northern communities are much more difficult to assess. It is well documented that while resource development generally brings piles of cash in to communities that desperately need it, that cash infusion is often followed by a rash of social problems.

Despite the abundant risks, many northern residents remain cautiously optimistic about partnership with Hydro on the Keeyask and Conawapa projects. But if the experience of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation and their recent partnership with Hydro on the Wuskwatim dam is any indication fo what to expect, First Nations and other northern residents should be wary. After cost over-runs more than doubled Wuskwatim’s price tag to $1.7 billion, Nisichawayasihk finds itself burdened with over $36 million in debt. It could be decades before the community realizes any tangible economic benefits. By comparison, costs are estimated at $6.2 billion for Keeyask and over $10 billion for Conawapa, without including the costs of building the Bipole 3 transmission line to transport the electricity to southern markets.

Besides, Kulchyski predicts that any jobs First Nations might see from upcoming Hydro projects would be short-term, unskilled, and would only serve to further “exacerbate existing inequalities.”

“The jobs that are created are at the very bottom of a racially stratified workforce,” he says, echoing a concern of many who spoke before the CEC. The youth delegates from Fox Lake in particular stressed the need for meaningful training and opportunity for advancement, not just jobs. “The experience from the Nisichawayasihk is that many Aboriginal workers don’t last very long on the job, because they’re treated like dirt. Because they are on the bottom of the hierarchy, and everybody knows that they got the job because [their] First Nation fought for them to get it.”

“This is the end of the traditional culture,” Kulchyski continued, citing the testimonials of trappers from the Concerned Fox Lake Grassroots Citizens group. Even though neither Keeyask nor Conawapa have passed all their regulatory hurdles, Hydro is already building access roads and clearing brush for work camps. “They’ve already pulled the trigger… It’s the end of the trapping way of life for the community. That means it’s basically the end of the culture.”

Industrial projects on the scale of Hydro’s developments in northern Manitoba since the 1970s are difficult, if not impossible, for southern residents to wrap their heads around, as are the often tragic implications for First Nations communities that result. When southern residents are also the beneficiaries of such mega-projects, it’s even harder to argue against them. Manitobans—myself included—enjoy the lowest electricity rates in North America. The uncomfortable reality is that we continue to do so at the expense of Indigenous communities in the northern hinterlands whose constitutionally protected, traditional way of life is on its last legs.

@badguybirnie