In the 20 minutes or so that it took for Energy Minister Michelle Mungall to announce the NDP's promised review of the Site C dam on Wednesday, B.C. Hydro spent about $28,000 building the thing on the Peace River.
The $8.8-billion Site C dam is the most expensive public-sector project in B.C. history.
The NDP has threatened to kill it, but they say they will keep building it while they decide its fate.
And it's costing you a fortune: $2 million a day in construction costs. That's $1,388 a minute. And the meter will keep running while the government figures out whether the project is too expensive or not.
Mungall announced the independent B.C. Utilities Commission will review the dam and issue an interim report in six weeks and a final report in 12 weeks.
But the review won't start for another week from now. That means another $14 million will be spent before the review even begins.
That's on top of the $30 million that's been spent on the dam since the new NDP government was sworn in July 18.
Why keep spending such vast sums of money on a project the government may kill a couple of months from now?
Mungall said the government didn't want to pre-judge the work of the commission or upset the lives of 2,200 construction workers.
"To immediately stop the project would have impacts on them, so we have to recognize that," she said.
OK, but if you're just going to fire them all anyway, I'm not sure the workers will appreciate the gesture.
I used to think John Horgan, the new NDP premier, would not have the guts to fire all those Site C workers. Now I'm not so sure.
There's a lot of deep-seated opposition to the project within the NDP. Green party Leader Andrew Weaver -- Horgan's partner in the NDP-Green governing alliance -- is also firmly opposed and Horgan needs to keep him happy.
Throw in the fact that the Site C dam is ex-premier Christy Clark's personal pet project and there's a revenge motive to deny her a legacy.
Horgan has also promised to try to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, another project hated by the NDP's powerful environmental wing.
But the pipeline is federal jurisdiction and the province may be powerless to stop it. Killing the Site C dam might be a consolation prize for environmental activists who want at least one big project scrapped.
The Utilities Commission review will focus on the economics of the project, including the cost to B.C. Hydro ratepayers, whether there are cheaper alternatives to building the dam and the province's latest electricity demand forecast.
That last part is critical since critics of the dam say future estimated power demand has dropped and would force B.C. Hydro to export Site C's surplus power at a huge loss.
I still think Horgan won't have the jam to fire all those workers. But he will be under a lot of pressure to kill the dam.
