Media release
B.C. Citizens for Green Energy
www.greenenergybc.ca
July 15, 2009
Vancouver, B.C. – Former talk show personality Rafe Mair has been travelling around B.C. for the past year to rant against run-of-river green energy projects, and tonight he’s rolling into Nelson. And if the past is any indicator says David Field of B.C. Citizens for Green Energy, Mair’s appearance in Nelson will be filled with emotional bombast and strident misinformation.
Field says he’s attended several of Mair’s presentations in the Lower Mainland over the past year and Mair repeats the same outrageous myths and fallacies about green energy projects each time.
“Contrary to what Rafe Mair claims, B.C.’s rivers are not being sold, stolen or given away for run-of-river electricity production,” Field said. “Mair’s claims have been discredited time and time again and people like Mair who make this emotional claim are either intentionally, or unintentionally, confusing water license applications with approvals for run-of-river projects.”
Field says that although water license applications can be numerous, actual approvals for run-of-river projects are infrequent and difficult to achieve as the bar is set very high for these projects. The overwhelming majority of license applications, he says, are never able to measure up to the stringent environmental requirements and are either rejected or withdrawn.
If and when a run-of-river project does manage to meet all of the environmental and regulatory requirements and is approved, Field stresses that that approval does not give anyone ownership of a river or the water in a river.
“Rafe Mair likes to hold up NAFTA as a bogyman to support his claims about B.C. rivers being sold,” Field said. “But there is nothing in NAFTA that would force B.C. to grant the continued use of crown land by an IPP beyond the termination date of a lease and nothing that would force B.C. to allow an IPP to export water. All of this was supported by a joint declaration in 1993 by all three countries involved.”
Field says the claim that independent green energy producers have perpetual access to B.C.’s water just by signing a lease for a period of years runs completely counter to all property laws in the US and Canada. The maximum duration of a water licence, he points out, is no more than 40 years after which all water rights revert back to the people of B.C.
Field says Mair’s travels around B.C. also need to be viewed against the larger backdrop of the aggressive, well-orchestrated misinformation campaign against green energy led by the Canadian Office & Professional Employees Union (COPE 378), the union that represents BC Hydro employees. Field says the key strategy of the COPE 378 led campaign against green energy, which COPE 378 operates under the “Take Back the Power” banner, like that of Rafe Mair, has been to steamroll over the facts and drill misinformation into peoples’ heads through relentless repetition and emotional rhetoric.
Additional information about green energy is available on the B.C. Citizens for Green Energy website at www.greenenergybc.ca and on the website’s myth busters page www.greenenergybc.ca/myths.html. Several short videos on the subject of green energy in B.C. are also posted on YouTube www.youtube.com/GreenEnergyBC and on the B.C. Citizens for Green Energy website at www.greenenergybc.ca.
Copies of the green energy group’s two-and-a-half page white paper on NAFTA are also available on the B.C. Citizens for Green Energy website (click here to view the report).
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For more information contact David Field
Co-spokesperson, B.C. Citizens for Green Energy
604-529-1604
e-mail us at info@greenenergybc.ca
B.C. Citizens for Green Energy is an advocacy group representing a cross-section of British Columbians who encourage a legacy of clean, sustainable electricity for future generations.
www.greenenergybc.ca