Shame and Arrogance of NB Power
How is it possible that a corporation owned by the taxpayers of New Brunswick is allowed by our elected government to conduct its affairs with total disregard for the safety and personal property of those same taxpayers? How has this corporation been allowed to steal our very livelihood and communities and place us all in mortal danger? Why do we stand for such behavior when any other criminal is hunted down and brought to justice? Why? Because we let them! And we have let them ever since the provincial government started its program of hydroelectric development on the Saint John River back in the 1950s….all in pursuit of modernization and the betterment of the province as a whole (not to mention the provision of cheap electricity to the multinationals). Don’t get me wrong, I am all for development and progress but surely some sense of fair play must be thrown into the brew at some point. I know you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet but being the cracked egg time and time again gets a little tiresome.
NB Power consistently maintains that the development of hydroelectric dams on the Saint John River has absolutely nothing to do with the flooding that has occurred on the river since those dams were constructed. It’s all just coincidental, I guess…a simple act of nature beyond human control. This mantra has been repeated ad nauseum to any and all who will listen and has served as an impenetrable armour against any challenge brought forth by anyone who has ever had the audacity to question them. To the corporation, flood victims are nothing more than tiresome complainers who really should just get out of the road so that the corporation can continue utilizing the free resource (the river) to generate power. If they don’t get out of the road, well too bad, they will have to suffer the consequences and “mother nature” can be a bitch.
NB Power doesn’t care about you and me; in fact, they don’t even care about the headpond as evidenced by their total lack of any maintenance of same since Beechwood was commissioned in 1957. Oh yeah, there was that small amount of dredging back in 1994 but other than that, nothing. Imagine, 55 years without maintenance. What other enterprise operates with that maintenance schedule? Last summer the river in Perth-Andover was brown for the entire season because of silt being carried by the river due to heavy rainfall. Mysteriously, in the recently released Flood Mitigation Study (that amazing time-eating spin document) real live scientists could find no evidence of siltation in the river when any recreational boater could take one to several silt clogged spots just as folks living along the river could point out areas where ice jams traditionally occur because of siltation. In fact, a family member was boating on Labor Day and nearly ran aground on a sand bar in the middle of the river about 2 kilometers above the dam! But the powers that be don’t want this evidence to muddy the waters (so to speak) while they try to once again spin this so that NB Power gets a free pass and is allowed to carry on with business as usual with total disregard of anyone who has the misfortune to be in the road.
This tragedy has been allowed to continue for generations. Since the Beechwood dam was constructed there have been several studies done on the river as to ice jams and flooding. Each has been sponsored by the province and/or NB Power and each has concluded that the hydro dams constructed by NB Power have absolutely nothing to do with the flooding (quelle surprise!). Interestingly, there have been 19 recorded floods in Perth-Andover since 1887 of which 5 occurred before 1957 and 14 since. The first recorded evidence of basement flooding in Perth-Andover occurred in 1958 – the spring after Beechwood was commissioned.
When you think about it, it is undeniable that the construction of a hydro dam has an effect on a river. Otherwise why would it be built? A dam is designed to create a headpond which is manipulated to generate hydroelectricity. Prior to the construction of Beechwood you could wade across the river in Perth-Andover. Many of our seniors did so in their youth. Now, the water depth at the bridge is 30 feet (according to the latest report) because we are part of the headpond. Without the headpond, we would have an extra 25 feet of space in the riverbed that could hold the spring runoff before our homes and businesses would be in any danger of flooding! How then can NB Power continue the charade that the dam at Beechwood has absolutely no impact on flooding in Perth-Andover?
Here’s where the political/bureaucratic double speak comes in. And this latest report is full of it. Page 8 of the report notes an internal review done by NB Power concluded that “Dam operations are not a significant contributing factor to ice jam formation” and this “internal review was validated by Hatch Canada, an independent consulting engineering firm”. (Hatch was formerly known as Acres Consulting and has been NB Powers go-to consulting firm for years). Note that the reference is to dam “operations” as opposed to dam “construction”. We can argue about dam operations forever (ie why did they stop the ice flow at 7PM on the evening of Thursday, March 22 by closing the Beechwood gates when ice was flowing like a freight train past Kilburn and would have kept moving right through the gates had they stayed open? Watch out Woodstock and Fredericton!) but the point is that if the dam wasn’t there we wouldn’t have been flooded. Neither the internal review nor the validation by Hatch make any reference to this simple fact. Indeed how could they? That’s a road they don’t want to go down.
NB Power and particularly the Beechwood Dam is the root cause of our flooding problem and we all know it. It appears we are going to have to prove it because clearly our government is not prepared to address this problem head-on and accept full responsibility for the damage inflicted upon us over the years. We deserve better!
To all those detractors who write hateful comments online (anonymously of course which is the true mark of a coward) about us and our constant demands for a government hand-out, know this: we did not build our community in a flood zone; NB Power brought the flood zone to us. It has essentially expropriated our property – we are only asking that they pay us for it.
Al McPhail
Chair
Perth-Andover Flood Victims Committee
