Two-Year Moratorium on Private Power Projects

WHEREAS the government of British Columbia has granted numerous water licenses to private hydro developers without overall land use planning and overall environmental impact assessment, and the government continues to issue potentially hundreds of water licenses, environmental permits and Crown land tenures for diversion of our rivers, and building of power plants and transmission lines in our wilderness; AND WHEREAS many serious questions have been raised about the economic, environmental and social impact of these proposed private power projects, as well as about the accuracy of the governments projections of our future power needs and neither local governments nor the residents of BC have been adequately consulted about the potential effect on them; AND WHEREAS there will be little to no harm to the Province from a short hiatus in developing these projects, and there is great potential harm if our rivers are devastated and alienated from British Columbians: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the UBCM support the call for a two-year moratorium on granting water licences, environmental permits and land tenures for the purpose of developing private run-of-river or hydro power projects in order to conduct a comprehensive regulatory, environmental and community review process, to examine the cumulative impacts of proposed private power projects.