Ian Cobb, Invermere Valley Echo editor
June 17, 2008
“Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” — Hungarian Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1938
More than 125 people came through the old hall to learn more about or make statements concerning independent power producers (IPPs) and run-of-river power generation.
While there was much hullabaloo about the environmental terror lurking beneath the surface of most run-of-river projects, the most alarming thing being addressed by some speakers, including former Scored Environment Minister and right wing radio talk show host Rafe Mair and Western Canada Wilderness Committee director Joe Foy, was how close we are coming to losing control of our water in this province.
With about 500 IPP applications stacked up on our provincial masters’ desks, it appears as though there is a gold rush approach to our rivers and creeks, those remaining few that haven’t been significantly messed with already by we busy beaver humans, as noted by Foy.
Mair, BC Hydro union spokesperson Sage Aaron and Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald, among others, are all suggesting that Premier Gordon Campbell is selling B.C.’s rivers and streams to private interests, and along with it, BC Hydro.
Let’s just forget about the BC Hydro sale for the time being, which is fodder for another entire editorial.
The theories put forward about how Campbell and company are taking a “stealth approach” to privatizing BC Hydro are sound and it will be up to Gordo and company to prove them wrong.
Let’s just look at the concept that these twirling nimrods might be on the verge of also selling off our rivers and streams to corporations so they can generate power. Now, of course we need power and we need more of it all the time. Solutions must be found and they are out there. Wind power, tidal power and other high tech solutions are available, almost en masse, so the excuse that we need to rape the daylights out of 500 creeks and streams in order to add dribs and drabs of new power to the grid, is only acceptable to the easily fooled or sweepingly uncaring.
Water rights must remain in the hands of the collective — of we the people. Corporations are evil. Doesn’t anyone watch television or movies or read magazines and papers? For every single corporation that does the world good, another 99 are happily stomping about seeking slave wage earning workers, looking for lead paint to cover their asbestos products and having their way with a screaming and terrified Mother Nature.
We’re going to sign our waterways over to these types?
As Foy stated last week, there is a time to be angry and to use anger and it is now. If that is Campbell and company’s intention, then we need to start preparing the political gallows and quickly.
Mair repeatedly called Campbell an “autocrat” and his government an “autocracy,” and those are most fitting descriptives if those clowns are actually on the verge of giving a plethora of money mining maggots the keys to the greatest wealth of our kingdom — our still abundant water supply.
A crackhead with just a single functioning brain cell, licking coagulated ice cream off a store stoop on East Hastings, would tell you that water is the second most important resource in the world, trailing only oxygen.
So for anyone in a position of power who contemplates the sale of public water and water rights, for any reason, that means they have absolutely no concept of the big picture and they are henceforth dangerous and should be removed from power.
What a legacy! Imagine — 50 years in the future and Canada is lost as a world economic power because like utter idiots we sold off our seemingly endless water rights, which are now the most valuable commodity in the world thanks to human recklessness.
Won’t you look like a right chucklemonkey then, eh Gordon?
Your children’s children will learn that you were the leader who ruined British Columbia — who gave away our single most precious resource for… what?
The anti IPP people are right — we must take a war-like stance and fight this threat to our future
In short: don’t mess with the fine balance. There is no forgiveness and there is no extra 50 or so in the tank when we hit E. When we foul up our water and when we give away our water rights, we won’t be able to pull the net over, shout “car” and resume playing once it passes.
So do the right thing, Gordon. Keep our rivers in our control.
History will be your judge.