NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Talk has been resurrected over a hydro dam spanning the Slave River just south of the NWT border.
Representatives from ATCO and TransCanada met with the Alberta government standing committee on resource stewardship in November to present their plans for the renewable energy project.
The project would flood out the rapids between Fort Smith and Smith's Landing First Nation in Alberta, home to the Slave River Paddlefest.
For now, as far as Genevieve Cote is concerned, there is nothing new about the proposal. The companies are just trying to secure funding for the project from the Alberta government.
Cote is the co-ordinator for the Slave River Paddlefest, started in 2008 as a protest against hydro development on the river.
"To my understanding, there is nothing new about the dam proposal at the moment, they were just hoping to get a guarantee from the Alberta government for funding," said Cote.
It's the same dam proposal that was rejected in 2010 after then chief of Smith's Landing, Cheyanne Paulette, rejected the requests for a feasibility study.
"We started in 2006; there have been studies on the Slave River for decades. The most recent large-scale study was in the early '80s with the Alberta government looking at it," said Doug Tenney, vice-president of hydro development for ATCO, in front of the committee.
"ATCO and TransCanada are now looking at a run-of-river facility there. There are four sets of rapids with about a 35-metre drop, so it's ideally suited for large-scale. There would be minimal flooding," said Tenney.
But that minimal flooding would destroy the Mountain, Pelican and Cassette Rapids. It would also drown the pelican sanctuary at Mountain Portage. Some of that flooding would also be on Smith's Landing First Nation.
"When we originally looked at this project it was very clear to us that we needed and wanted to have significant aboriginal involvement. At the time we were not able to reach agreement with the band in order to proceed. We felt so strongly that we needed aboriginal involvement and support in this project that we felt it was probably not the right time to proceed. Lots has changed even in the two years since that decision was made," said Alex Pourbaix, president of energy and oil pipelines for TransCanada.
But the band hasn't changed its stance on development.
"The concerned band is still standing on their grounds about it so the proposed project is on ice. It's a project that will never go away as far as "green energy" is concerned," said Cote.
