Even if there *were* such a thing as point of no return, this wouldn't be it. The dam itself, the wall, hasn't even been started at #SiteC. About $5.5bn has been spent, much of it coping with mud. The budget is estimated at $12bn now but most think it'll be far more than that.
The cost of alternatives is below $7bn and plummeting daily. By the time we need electricity it'll have dropped far further. (But we don't need electricity right now, period, as BC has a surplus & is paying IPPs not to produce.)
..The reason why ~$5.5bn has already been spent on #SiteC even though they haven't made much headway in construction, & why thye've almost burned through the project's entire contingency fund years before completion date, is not just the usual megaproject mismgmt. It's the mud.
The diversion of the river for #SiteC was delayed a year already (cost: nearly $1bn) because the two ~1km-long river diversion tunnels bored through unstable shale kept failing, & a $$$$$$ 2-metre thick lining of concrete had to be poured into each of them at our expense
..the whole North (left) bank at #SiteC was so unstable that they had to keep shaving it back (remember the massive tension crack that showed up there a couple years ago) at a massive cost to us. An unimaginable weight in top layers and shale trucked away. The diesel, the hours..
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Important WSJ article on Canada's rivers drying up while we keep building dams anyway, including #SiteC. It's paywalled so I'll include the whole article in this 🧵
Diversify into renewables now! BC can't until it ditches the deceptively named Clean Energy Act.#bcpoli #cdnpoli
Had Bing Thom not died prematurely, he would have gone after @AIBCconnected for its gentleman's agreement rule that architects can't criticize other projects. Reportedly a certain major arch'l firm in Vancouver reported Bing to AIBC for his letter opposing #105Keefer. #vanpoli
@AIBCconnected Bing Thom intended to go after AIBC's muzzling rule & publicly ask them:
"What is the point of architecture if there's no discourse? What is the role of the architect in society? Do we have a public responsibility or are we just hired guns?"
@AIBCconnected Bing's death was a terrible loss for public discourse in Vancouver. BTW he also helped us with a fight I co-founded against the proposed downtown casino expansion (we beat the expansion partly thx to him). You could count on him to do the right thing. AIBC tries to block this.
My elderly family member, whom I kept free of Covid for 3+ years but who finally caught in in an unmasked BC hospital last week, is very sick on Day 9. Rapid test still shows a bright red line. For health issues she can't take Paxlovid. She's in a rage at you, @adriandix. #bcpoli
@adriandix "I'm furious at the hospital and at all the unmasked healthcare workers, but I'm more outraged by @adriandix and Bonnie Henry. The govt is ultimately to blame."
@adriandix She asks: "Why aren't they following science?"
"They kept taking my mask off for tests and procedures - and they weren't even wearing masks when they did it."
I’m a rural BC hospital taking an elderly relative to ER. No masks on staff & visitors but aggressive efforts to make everyone sanitize their hands, despite the fact that the diseases helping to crash the health system are airborne. We are truly living in an age of disinformation
*I’m IN a rural BC hospital. I am not a hospital. But you got that
Look at the handwashing fixation of @IPACCanada & the blindness to airborne transmission & masking stretching back many years. Every year they suggest infection control is largely a handwashing issue. It's as if all the airborne diseases do not exist. Why?
@BCGreens@SoniaFurstenau Here's the timeline of John Horgan's involvement with Teck Resources before he left office. Judge for yourself:
In Dec 2021 the feds indicated they were considering referring Teck's selenium pollution in the Elk Valley to the internat'l joint commission (IJC) #bcpoli
@BCGreens@SoniaFurstenau Feds became involved because Teck's selenium pollution was a longstanding issue. (Recall the fines)
March 2022 Teck lobbied the feds asking that the Elk Valley pollution not be referred to the IJC.
April 12 Teck lobbied Horgan's Chief of Staff & deputy mins of Env & Energy+Mines
The BC govt can fudge the death stats from Covid all it wants ("that death wasn't FROM Covid, it was WITH Covid" etc).
The real truth is the "excess deaths" number - that is, how many of us are dying now vs. before pandemic, minus other factors like poisoned drugs & heat dome.
This is why data modellers like @MoriartyLab focus on excess deaths as the real statistical truth of Covid impacts over time. The problem tho is that over time, elevated deaths from Covid will start to be the "normal" death rate, against which we're comparing new Covid deaths...
This problem is being discussed in several chats I'm in that include Covid science & medical types and public health advocates. What happens when we can't use excess deaths as reliably to get around the govt's obfuscation around Covid's serious health impacts on the public?