River Landscape

River Landscape

Rivers aren't just for fly fishing. Robert Redford's film A River Runs Through It features fly fishing and includes breathtaking vistas of Montana's mountains, rivers, streams, endless skies, prairies, and meadows.

About an hour's flight north of Vancouver lies Toba Inlet, a remote area on the west coast of BC. Like the vistas featured in Redford's film, Toba Inlet is breathtakingly beautiful, encompassing majestic coastal mountains and rainforest. And like the film, rivers play a star role, keeping Local 67 members busy. Only they're not fly fishing. They're busy tapping the vast energy potential of the province's abundant rivers to generate clean, green electricity.

As nations struggle to meet growing energy demands, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have become a major concern. Although the energy dilemma is most profoundly demonstrated in China, it is by no means limited to developing nations. Over the next 40 years, two-thirds of BC's current generating capacity will have to be added to meet growing demand.

That's where Local 67 members come in. They're busy building run-of-river power generation projects, which tap into the province's immense system of fast-flowing rivers and streams. It's hydro electricity without the need for a big dam-and without the devastating environmental impact dams create.

Run-of-river technology involves diverting water from a river and sending it into a pipe called a penstock, which feeds the water downhill to a power station. The rushing water spins turbines that generate electricity. The water leaves the power station and is returned to the river downstream, without altering the existing flow of the river or water levels. Once the project is completed, the area is replanted with native vegetation, leaving behind only a small intake facility, a power station downstream, and hydro wires.

The East Toba and Montrose generating stations, currently being built by 320 Local 67 members, are situated at the headwaters of Toba Inlet. Crews building the site work a shift rotation of 20 days in and 8 days out. Each worker is flown in by seaplane out of Vancouver.

Building run-of-river stations is not for the faint of heart. Not everyone enjoys camp life. They went through close to 700 workers before landing the 135 diehards currently building the Upper Stave River project north of Mission. Shift rotation is 28 days on, 14 days off, and each shift is 11 hours long.

The huge potential of power generation using run-of-river technology will be a major economic initiative in BC for the foreseeable future. Premier Campbell recently announced new targets of reaching provincial electrical self-sufficiency by 2016 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020.

Ambitious goals indeed. Goals that will ensure rivers will be running through the lives of our construction workers for years to come. The clean energy of the run-of-river projects they build will help power BC for decades, while leaving the landscape in all its natural splendour-something you don't need to be a fly fisherman to appreciate.

http://www.clac.ca / The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) is a union that is making a difference across Canada. With more than 50,000 members working in construction, social services, healthcare, transportation, retail, education, hospitality, manufacturing and more. Visit CLAC to learn more or contact one of our representatives at http://www.clac.ca /

What should I study if I want to clean up my country (rivers, landscape, etc)?

I recently moved to Paraguay after growing up and finishing highschool in NY. I have come to really like this country, and it has such natural beauty, full of rivers and hills, etc. However, people here don't care enough about keeping these resources clean, and thus they are now very polluted. I can go to the university here for free, and want to enroll soon. What can I study to accomplish my dream of seeing a cleaner, more beautiful Paraguay?

Environmental science is probably the best introduction to addressing these problems. I'm in Australia, which has the highest rate of extinction of animal species on the planet, yet farmers here continue to treat the environment as a resource to be exploited, with no concern for it's long-term welfare. I hope you succeed in your ambitions. The planet's future depends on people like you.