Site C dam reservoir now fully filled, generating power but flooding land loved by locals

After 11 weeks, the Site C dam reservoir in northeastern B.C. is now fully filled.

B.C. Hydro announced the process was complete on Nov. 7, having started in August.

One electricity generating unit has already started feeding into B.C.’s power grid, and another five are set to come online between now and the fall of 2025, increasing the province’s power production capacity by an estimated eight per cent.

The utility says it has conducted over a thousand inspections for safety checks and will continue to monitor environmental impacts over the lifetime of the dam, in partnership with Treaty 8 First Nations who live in the area.

In the end, B.C. Hydro estimates the dam will be able to provide 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year, at a time when the province is in need of more low-carbon, renewable energy to power rising demand from both consumers and industrial projects.

‘Grieving process’ as local watches land flood

On its website, B.C. Hydro says the reservoir extends 83 kilometres between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope, and has a total surface area of about 93 square kilometres — about 25 times the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park or five times the size of the City of Victoria.

That includes swaths of land important to many in the area, including farmland, wildlife habitat and First Nations cultural sites.

Wayne Sawchuk, a lifetime resident of the Peace region, has been watching it fill day by day with a sense of loss.

“It’s a grieving process,” he said. “I think anybody who is from this area is sadly sorry to see what’s happening.”

B.C. Hydro says it has taken steps to minimize the impacts, which include removing vegetation from the reservoir area in advance and building new habitats for fish and wildlife to relocate to.

It’s also established a $20-million compensation fund to support local agriculture and says less than one per cent of agricultural land will be impacted by the project.

But Sawchuk says only so much can be done when the landscape is being permanently altered, comparing watching the water build up to watching someone have the life squeezed out of them.

“I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like a horrific process,” he said. “Everything under there [the water] is dead.”

$16B project decades in the making

The $16 billion megaproject has been on the books for decades, having first been proposed in the 1950s. 

The idea went through a series of stops and starts until it was revived in 2010 by then-premier Gordon Campbell and fully approved by his successor, Christy Clark, touted as a way to help B.C. meet its environmental goals. Construction started in 2015.

In the leadup to the project, B.C. Hydro submitted impact reports, forecasting it would flood bear dens, destroy habitat for migratory birds and fish, flood First Nations heritage sites and force about 20 families to move.

But it also said it would create new habitats and create hundreds of jobs, and it was approved by both provincial and federal environmental and regulatory agencies.

“Ultimately, the environmental assessment considers the project benefits and the project effects and balances the two,” a B.C. Hydro spokesperson told Fort St. John residents in 2013. Many in the area supported it as a source of jobs and investment, including local MLAs who were part of the then-governing B.C. Liberal Party.

Still, multiple groups continued to oppose the project, including several First Nations who launched lawsuits arguing the flooding of their cultural areas and hunting grounds was a violation of treaty rights. 

It was also initially opposed by former premier John Horgan who, in 2012, then an NDP MLA, visited a farm that would be flooded by project in order to stake out his opposition to the project.

He put up a yellow stake to support Ken and Arlene Boon, third-generation farmers whose property would eventually be expropriated to make way for the dam.

“I cried,” Arlene Boon told CBC News in 2017 in after losing her land.

“You’re walking on the floor of your grandfather’s house that you don’t own… expropriation is a brutal process.”

First Nations concerns

The Boons were further disappointed when Horgan became premier and, after a 2017 review, decided Site C should continue to move forward.

In the years after that, the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations lost court cases against the project and ultimately decided to stop trying to fight, saying they simply didn’t have the resources to carry on.

“We’ve, as a community, come to a realization that they’re not stopping,”said West Moberly Chief Roland Willson after announcing a partial settlement over the project in 2022. “[We’re] painfully aware that we’ve lost the valley.”

He continues to maintain the project is a “clear violation” of treaty rights, and in the weeks since the reservoir started being filled, has been sharing memories of his attempts stop the dam. He says he had no choice but to move forward.

That’s a sentiment shared by Sawchuk as he looks at the land he loves changing forever. Moving forward, he says, he wants attention to be paid to preventing other megaprojects from being built in the region.

“The land sustains us all. We can’t continue to do these kind of things… we have to be more respectful,” Sawchuk said.