By Andru McCracken

A local company has filed an interest in building a run of the river hydro plant in a tributary of Castle Creek, in the Cottonwood Valley near McBride.

We spoke to the president of the company, John Wheeler about who they are, the project they are planning and whether private power generation makes sense in a province with a formidable utility like BC Hydro.

The company is comprised of four local men: former high school teacher and micro hydro developer Harold Edwards, electrician Pietro Caputo, welder Jeff Heimbecker and John Wheeler.

The company was formed in 2003 with a view to building their own hydroelectric generating plant.

The project

Wheeler feels that the project could generate between 20 and 25 MW of power. And this is a far sight more than other hydroelectric projects planned for operating in the area.

“It’s bigger than any other single one in the region and down to Kamloops,” he said.

Wheeler said that the site has the potential to produce this much electricity because there is large elevation change over a small distance.

“This is a typical hanging valley left over from the ice age. It has a big glacier feeding a large area, which drops rapidly,” he said.

Because it is a glacier fed creek, Wheeler said that they could deliver electricity to BC Hydro over a period of 7 to 8 months, not just during the spring when the freshet occurs.

Wheeler said that the drainage that feeds the creek is 160 square kilometres.

“Twenty-five square kilometres of that is glacier. That has a good effect in that it tends to flatten and extends the season that the water is coming down. It doesn’t all rush down in May or June. The river is still running high in September,” he said.

“We can generate power when BC Hydro has a lot more load [during] the season when all the air conditioners are going in the south,” he said.

Wheeler said that he’s been looking for a good site to develop a run of the river hydroelectric project for a long time and although he grew up very close by, he actually became aware of the river by looking at a map much later in life.

“I’ve been looking for quite a few years now. The more I looked, the more I liked.”

He and Edwards took a full day to hike three kilometres because of the slope and the nature of the forest there.

“Because it is so hard to access it is hard to do a lot of the preliminary work. When it takes two days to get into somewhere, it makes doing your studies a lot tougher,” he said.

Transmitting power

If the project moves ahead, the company will have to find a way to transmit power back to the main grid which could mean high power transmission lines to McBride, or potentially through the mountains.

“It’s a long way from anywhere, which makes it difficult from a transmission perspective, but in many other aspects very attractive,” he said. “We have identified the power line as much as we can. Until we have further discussion we don’t know what the (solution is).”

There is the possibility of the transmission line being extended this way, or we may have to go it alone and put our own in.

Private versus public and the environmental debate

To be sure, there is a group called the BC Citizens for Public Power who are absolutely against independent power producers and see it as undermining the public utility, allowing private developers to profit using a public resource.

“I understand that point of view, but I don’t agree with it,” said Wheeler. “We use it for a few seconds, but pay $50,000 to $100,000 per year let alone all the taxes.”

He is also a staunch supporter of BC Hydro, but doesn’t feel they are the ones who should develop small run of the river hydroelectric projects.

“I absolutely want BC Hydro to stay public, but I also know the way they do things. You just have a meeting with BC Hydro and there will be 10 or 15 people being paid $150 per hour. We can’t do things that way. We can produce that energy cheaper if they were developing the same thing,” he said.

“I hope it isn’t controversial. I hope we can do it in a way that people can accept,” he said.

“This is just the very beginning of the process of public consultation. Everyone has chance to have some input into it,” he said.

Wheeler said that the group is looking at making some innovations, which could reduce the overall impact of the project.

“We live here. We’re involved in the community. It is not as if we’re outsiders where we don’t care about the thing,” he said. “We are looking at doing things that have the smallest environmental impact.”

Wheeler does see how the push for run of the river hydro projects is a bit like a gold rush.

“Some things fall by the wayside,” he said.

Self taught

Wheeler is a bit of a wonder kid. His only formal education is a single year of pre-engineering at college.

“Everything else including my electrical ticket, I challenged the exams, but didn’t do any formal training in it,” he said.

He got his start in run of the river hydroelectric projects at Harold Edward’s farm 18 or 19 years ago. “He and I built the whole thing from scratch,” said Wheeler. “It peaked my interest in it, and I got involved in other projects and was involved in wiring them.”

While he has a ticket as an electrician, the breadth and scope of this work is more in line with the work of an engineer, an ambitious one at that.

“Most of what I do is engineering and quite specialized engineering, but I can’t call it that because I am not a licensed engineer,” he said.

When Wheeler does critical work, it has to be overseen by a qualified engineer. But Wheeler doesn’t begrudge that to the professionals, he said he’s happy to collaborate and appreciates having another person look at and understand his work.

“By the time I have explained it to them, there are often opportunities to find a better way of doing it. Anybody in a design field shouldn’t try to do it all alone,” he said.

If you would like to see maps of the proposed site and links a list of proposed hydro electric projects follow the links from our website robsonvalleytimes.com.