The first of what will likely be many lawsuits was explained Wednesday as an objection to the process the B.C. government followed in getting the Site C dam's environmental approvals.
But the underlying issue in the first suit is simply that 54 landowners near the Peace River, for understandable reasons, don't want the dam built.
Not liking a government decision is a fairly common reaction, but it's no basis for a lawsuit. So there's much more riding on the process questions the Peace Valley Land Owners Association have raised in seeking a judicial review of the approval.
The $7.9-billion dam project won provincial and federal environmental permits this month, and a final decision from the B.C. cabinet on whether to go ahead is expected shortly. B.C. Hydro has served local notice it is ready to start digging within the next 90 days.
Spokesman Ken Boon said "there's no rush to start" and he trusts no work will begin until this lawsuit and an identical one to be filed soon against the federal government run their course.
That's a lot of trust. There's a big guessing game on whether the cabinet will actually pull the trigger on the project after decades of off-and-on talk. But if it gets the green light, there's little doubt Hydro would move quickly. The more momentum it builds, the harder it would be to derail. If work begins despite the lawsuit, the landowners would likely also need to apply for an injunction.
The origin of their legal case is in the joint review panel report conducted on behalf of both governments and released last spring. It was an exhaustive review of the huge project that arrived as a lukewarm endorsement.
It included a lot of criticism about how B.C. Hydro had gone about researching the economics. It said the utility had not actually demonstrated the need for the dam and the new power on the timeline proposed.
But the bottom line conclusion was a green light.
"The benefits are clear," said the report. "Despite high initial costs, and some uncertainty about when the power would be needed, the project would provide a large and long-term increment of firm energy and capacity at a price that would benefit future generations.
"It would do this in a way that would produce a vastly smaller burden of greenhouse gases than any alternative save nuclear power, which B.C. has prohibited."
The landowners' suit is about some specific recommendations the panel made to government that the environmental assessment office declared were out of order before they even got to the decision-makers. Those include recommendations to refer some key uncertainties about costs and alternatives to the independent B.C. Utilities Commission, something the government has avoided for years.
The landowners said the panel was expressly required to assess economic impacts, and the key ministers involved were not permitted under law to ignore those findings.
That makes the process "seriously flawed," so the approval should be set aside, says the group.
"Relevant findings and recommendations of the Site C Joint Review Panel were not considered by the decision makers," they say. "Proven adverse impacts of the Site C Dam were not justified."
One finding in particular applies to the landowners. The panel acknowledged the dam and reservoir would end agriculture on the bottom lands and have a high impact on local farmers. But it "would not be significant in the context of B.C. or western Canadian agricultural production."
That's one of many sticking points in the argument ahead, as defending farmland is something of a sacred mission for groups opposed to the dam.
So the landowners claim the environmental-assessment office director erred in declaring some of the joint panel's recommendations to be outside the scope of its mandate. And the ministers erred in accepting that view.
No second-guessing here as to what a judge will make of it all, other than that it will likely take a while to decide. And that it won't be the only court case. Next up will be one or more First Nations, followed by any number of environmental groups.
