SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - No environmental assessment is needed for a replacement of the Bluefish Dam, says water board regulators, even though it's been more than a year after an assessment was skipped for fear of the dam's "imminent" collapse.

Now that its water licence application is up for renewal, the NWT Power Corporation is not required to undergo an assessment.

"We're more than willing to comply with environmental requirements. Under the circumstances, it may not be possible for them to happen in sequence because we need to get that dam replaced," said Mike Bradshaw, director of corporate communications for Power Corp.

The objective of an environmental assessment, especially in the latter stages, is to examine the likelihood of a project having adverse environmental impacts or causing public concern.

Zabey Nevitt, executive director of the Mackenzie Land and Water Board, confirmed an environmental assessment is not required for water licence reapplications, even though it is rare for a development project's initial application for a water licence to bypass the environmental assessment process.

In supporting documents filed to the board Oct. 15 for the licence renewal, Power Corp. indicates it discovered a leak in the dam in 2008 and that "parts of the dam had collapsed." Rather than going through a lengthy environmental assessment, Power Corp. requested an emergency exemption under the NWT Water Act. The board declined, and Power Corp. threatened legal action to have the matter examined in court.

"We simply advised the board we had no other option but to seek clarification from the courts. It isn't a lawsuit and we never proceeded with an application," said Bradshaw. But before an application to the court could be filed, the board reconsidered and granted the exemption.

That was in 2009. Now, a camp and fuel tanks are on site at Bluefish Lake, but work on the $17 million dam replacement project has been delayed until 2011 because warmer weather forced the winter road across the lake to shut down April 7, preventing the transportation of heavy equipment such as backhaul trucks and heavy graders to the site. The replacement dam is targeted to begin operation in 2013 - four years after the NTPC first requested an emergency exemption from an environmental assessment.

Nevitt wouldn't comment on whether in hindsight the board should have done anything differently given the lapse in time between granting an emergency exemption and the expected start of construction on the new dam, only to say "the information presented to the board (at the time) showed that there was an emergency impending, and that was the basis for which the board made the decision."

Bradshaw explained the situation at Bluefish has been "manageable" over the past 12 months because of daily inspections and lower water levels which have taken pressure off the facility. But he maintains the situation is "imminent" because no one knows when the dam will fail, which supplies power to Yellowknife and nearby communities. During peak times of the year, if the dam fails, the Snare hydro facility will not be able to provide enough power on its own, he said.

The NTPC first purchased the 70-year-old Bluefish Lake dam on Bluefish located about 20 km north of Yellowknife from Miramar Mining in 2003. The new dam will be built about 400 metres

downstream on the Yellowknife River.

Currently, the corporation's supporting documents for the water licence renewal are being reviewed by the board and a public hearing on the project is scheduled in Yellowknife for Feb. 8 and 9, 2011.

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