Dam will damage Treaty 8 Native lands and damage their food sources
By Lauren Kelly, News Editor
The proposed Site C Dam, which would be the third dam built on the Peace River in the Peace Valley region of BC, has been a matter of controversy for many years. Although it will provide more energy to BC, it will flood lands belonging to the Treaty 8 First Nations group and damage their fisheries.
The first dam on the river, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, began operation in 1968. In 1980, the Peace Canyon Dam opened 23km downstream. Although the Site C Dam was initially proposed alongside these two, its proposal was rejected by BC Hydro in 1983.
In December 2014, after three years of review by the federal and provincial government, the provincial government approved the project for construction at a cost of $8.335-billion. The dam will flood 100km of valley inhabited by the Treaty 8 First Nations and 3,800 hectares of agricultural land. In an op-ed for the Georgia Straight, BC NDP candidate Diana Day states “The Peace Valley region is vital agricultural land and may very well be the bread basket of BC in the future. We simply cannot afford to lose this land to Site C.”
The dams have also harmed the fish in the Peace Valley rivers, a vital food source for the Treaty 8 Native groups. Chief Derek Orr of McLeod Lake First Nation said in a press release on the subject: “It’s been 50+ years since the first backhoes disturbed the sediments on the Williston Reservoir, releasing methylmercury into the rivers and streams on Treaty 8 traditional territory—and it’s still here, contaminating our fisheries and endangering our health.”
In a study released by the West Moberly and McLeod Lake First Nations, it was revealed that 98 per cent of the fish caught in the Willston Reservoir surrounding the W.A.C. Bennett Dam contained mercury amounts that exceeded the guidelines for safe consumption.
“Building the proposed Site C dam would increase the exposure to potentially higher levels of mercury measures in three more rivers and many streams that are important for the aboriginal fisheries in the area,” said Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nations in the same release. “By ramming through the Site C dam project in the face of negative findings by the government’s own Joint Review Panel, Premier Clark is giving us the impossible choice of sacrificing either our culture or our health.”