history. Hydro has already spent $1.75 billion on the dam and continues to spend $60 million a month on the province’s biggest ever public sector construction project.
That’s $2 million a day. Or $83,333 an hour. Or $1,388 a minute. The dam will probably cost you another 7,000 bucks or so by the time you finish reading this. Any way you add it up, this thing is a money sucking beast.
And the meter won’t stop running while Horgan decides whether or not to kill it. Utilities Commission.
Horgan said he would ask the BCUC to give him an “interim report” on the project within six weeks, and a full report within three months. But there could easily be delays on the road to a final decision.
For one thing, Horgan isn’t premier yet though he got a step closer on Wednesday when Premier Christy Clark’s Liberals finally recalled the legislature for June 22.
That means Hydro will spend another $28 million or so on Site C before the legislature is even back in business. Green Party must defeat Clark’s Liberals on a confidence vote before he can take power with a minority government.
Then there are the other little things on his to do list, like appointing a cabinet and passing a new budget.
If he does manage to get some answers from the utilities commission by this fall, the amount spent on the dam will have ballooned to around $2 billion.
Keep in mind that would only be the amount of public money already spent. There would be all sorts of additional costs if Horgan actually threw the Site C kill switch.
How much would it all cost to stop the Site C dam? Hydro won’t say, which Horgan argues is one of the reasons for the utilities commission review.
Of course, there are lots of people who say the project is a white elephant and the costs of keeping it would outweigh the costs of killing it. Hydro customers could see their bills skyrocket to pay for the dam and the inflated cost of the electricity it will produce, which he argues we don’t need anyway.
But I still can’t shake the feeling that Horgan is looking for an escape clause of his own.
Does he really want to fire 2,200 construction workers as one of his first official duties as premier? Even Green party Leader Andrew Weaver who is vehemently opposed to the dam admitted Wednesday there is a financial “point of no return” where it won’t make sense to stop building it.
One thing’s for sure: The cost to kill this thing would make Ontario’s giant rubber duck bought by that province’s government for $120,000 to celebrate Canada Day look like a bargain.
Maybe Ontario would loan us that big rubber ducky. epaper, Digital Access, Subscriber Rewards), please input your Print Newspaper subscription phone number and postal code.
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