2024 Project Update
It is October 9th, 2024, and tough to believe almost twenty years has slipped by since we last participated in and submitted a proposal to BC Hydro in their 2006 Call for Power. A lot has changed since then and this year’s ‘BC Hydro 2024 Call for Power’ provided an opportunity for independent power producers (IPP’s) and First Nations to jointly participate in the first of a series of electricity/power calls that will be conducted over the next ten years by BC Hydro. We are very enthusiastic about our submission to BC Hydro, just days old now, which involves the forty-five-megawatt Anyox Storage Dam project. This single project can run local mines or in the alternative provide electricity for roughly 40,000 households, or some combination in between.
British Columbia currently finds itself significantly short of electricity and has become increasingly reliant on imported power to accommodate continued residential and industrial growth. Much of the imported power arrives from the United States through the Bonneville electrical hub. While the lower mainland has been growing in leaps and bounds other areas of the province have also experienced growth. In our project area, the North Coast region of BC, the mining exploration industry is thriving, which is no surprise as both value and demand for precious and critical minerals are strong worldwide.
Anyox Hydro Electric corp. in a way feels like an old ship, re-built and fresh off the ways. The old bones are still there. The concrete dam and powerhouse at Anyox have strengthened with age as quality concrete will. Members of the original project group were resurrected this past year and joined a young and talented team who are committed to moving these clean energy projects along. The author would like to express his thanks to these people and to the Nisga’a people of Laxgalts’ap and Boney Creek Development in particular, who have been solid and reliable partners throughout. Many hours of work and considerable sums went into the development of our submission to BC Hydro’s 2024 Call for Power. Despite the fact the numbers were not in our favor as this BC Hydro Call was primarily designed to attract lower cost wind energy projects, we felt that it was important to participate and develop a strong proposal and a committed project team along the way. It is difficult for a storage dam hydro project, whose primary benefit is providing firm, dispatchable power on demand, to compete with lower cost intermittent power resources like wind and solar. The inherent nature of hydroelectric infrastructure renders it more expensive, but we believe that its strengths justify the cost. Time will tell.
Both the British Columbia Government and BC Hydro recognize that the North Coast is home to BC’s golden triangle of mining, and they recognize that it is a region where power will be needed in the future to provide for industrial based loads including potential LNG exports. Our team feels confident that our time will come, and we continue to take appropriate steps towards getting these projects constructed in the most cost-effective manner possible, for the long-term benefit of British Columbians.
It is early October in the Nass Valley, and we are enjoying a long stretch of hot weather. The ninety-five-kilometer gravel road from Nass Camp to Kitsault is dry and dusty. Every few kilometers, a ruffed grouse appears wandering about looking for grubs. Several logging operations working in the area keep things interesting and we have no less than three radio frequencies to monitor on the way in.
It is nice to see the logging. Even though the spruce and hemlock logs harvested for the most part get dumped into prince Rupert Harbor and then shipped to China, there are men and women working steadily here and providing for their families. A bonus for us is that the roads are extremely well maintained. Thirty kilometers away from the Kitsault gate we pass the Kinskuch junction, affectionately called the ‘Squish’. We make one more frequency adjustment on the radio and head up towards the Clary Lakes.
Rob Bryce is driving, and we discuss the season that was. An action-packed year at Anyox and Alice Arm, just up the channel, saw our team hosting regular Ghost Town Tours and coordinating visits from various construction contractors and groups involved with the refurbishment of the Anyox hydroelectric facilities.
Copper is the reason that Anyox exists at all, and this past summer saw an exploratory drilling program conducted at Anyox by Skeena Resources on the Hidden Creek mineral claims. The whole area is rich with ancient Chalcopyrite rock that contains a host of critical minerals including copper. Five local members of the Nisga’a First Nation community worked with the Skeena Resources drill teams during this past summer and fall at Anyox.
We were also busy restoring the Alice Arm Lodge for a tourism project next summer. Below, we have captured some videos of the local building inspectors. I would be remiss in not mentioning Don Biberdorf, our gifted carpenter, who worked long hours this year at Alice Arm and built a beautiful new deck at the Alice Arm Lodge with local yellow cedar. It was an exciting project; the wood was well seasoned and of excellent quality. The inside of the lodge has been freshly painted, and the rooms are being updated. With a little luck we will be ready for tourists again in the summer!
The tours to Anyox tend to dry up this time of year as the vacationing families have all gone home and the kids are back at school. The Fall weather pattern also begins as frontal systems begin to roll in from the south with increasing rapidity during the months of October and November. Rain and lots of it is not far off but for now we are in t-shirts rolling down an empty road towards the Kitsault gate. Timing is everything and the weather is perfect for winterizing our boats along with the chalet in Alice Arm where we will spend the night.
Once through the recently vandalized gate we make our way down the long steady decline into the former mining town of Kitsault. There is no time like the present, so we begin winterizing the ‘Sea Hawk’, a twenty-two-foot Chris Craft we use for the tours designed for offshore Florida waters. We put some air in the old trailer’s tires, top up the fuel tank and add a little fuel stabilizer before driving up to meet Kitsault’s caretaker, Darren. A very nice talkative fellow, Darren lends us his garden hose and the outside tap. It is always a good idea to run some fresh water through the Optimax 225, and we start it up. Rob is becoming an expert outboard motor mechanic, and the Merc is running like a top. We replaced the original 2006 spark plugs this past year! We could not believe they operated for that long.
We launched our other boat, the original Langara Fishing Lodge #13 vessel which we converted to a center console. We call her Liddle Lady, after nearby Liddle Island. She is everything you could want up here. Self-bailing and easy to launch, Liddle lady is a heavy welded aluminum Ironwood boat that will take heavy seas safely and can pack a load. We run her across the inlet to Alice Arm and catch a ride into town with our neighbors the Perry’s. It was very kind of them to run us to the chalet as our old Polaris quad kept in the dock shed finally gave up the ghost after twenty years. I strongly recommend the Polaris quads as a tough well-made ATV. We have a Polaris side by side at the house which is one and a half kilometers from the Alice Arm dock, and it starts up the first time. The tires are a little low after sitting so we break out the little portable compressor to bring them all up to ten or twelve-pounds pressure.
Rob wants to see the progress made this summer, so we do a tour of Alice Arm. It is a little town with twenty-five or so permanent homes and the tour does not take long. We see a lot of wildlife along the way and check out the Kitsault River which is very near the Alice Arm Lodge. There is a big granddaddy Grizzly on the Kitsault River fishing at his favorite spot. We see him quite often and fortunately his honey hole is on the far side of the river.
Work progresses not only on the Alice Arm Lodge but also on some of our other residences in Alice Arm. The Blue Heron Gallery is being converted into a guest cabin for tourism and our Bug Creek cabin is being remodeled in advance of constructing the twenty-five-kilowatt hydroelectric station on this large creek. Next summer we plan to add a dormer onto Captain Vince Brown’s old place in the middle of town to add some light upstairs and rework the well system by adding a sand point.
Back at the chalet we light a fire in the wood-burning stove as it is starting to cool down at night. This is significant as the winter before last we had our entire cricket and chimney swept off the roof of the chalet under an unusually large snow load. I guess the old number ten screws that held the cricket onto the roof all those years had rusted through. Rob and I did the repairs which involved a fair bit of masonry work. We hoisted up the eighty pound chimney sections onto the roof and mortared them into place which was no easy feat.
Next morning we get a good jump on things and begin winterizing the chalet. It is a pretty easy process really. After first draining the hot water tank we placed our twelve-volt water pump’s intake hose into a five-gallon bucket of RV antifreeze suspended in the well and then hit the power switch on our solar powered twelve-volt system. One by one we open the valves starting with the hose bib and then working our way into the bathroom, kitchen, and finally the hot water tank and hot water system. Once the fixtures start to spill out pink RV antifreeze, we are good for minus twenty-five degrees. We fill the Polaris side by side and all the tanks of our small motors with ninety-four grade Chevron gas. With no room in the fuel tanks for air there is no possibility of getting water in the fuel tanks from condensation. Without a doubt dirty or water contaminated fuel is the single biggest problem we face in these remote areas. The high-octane Chevron gas allows us to avoid the need to use a fuel stabilizer, which is tedious and expensive.
Finally, it is time to leave, and our good friend Keith Edwards takes us down to the dock. The old Polaris quad is officially dead now as we break off one of the starter motor dogs after trying to start it one more time. However, it could be the plugs too! Fortunately, our friend and road builder Ed Gavelin has the exact same Polaris quad for sale with low hours and has offered to sell it to me. The old one and its rebuild becomes project number one hundred seventy-four.
On the other side we load the Liddle Lady onto the trailer, fill up the tank and run some fresh water through the new Merc sixty. After putting the boats to bed, we hit the road to Terrace. An in and out mission, this might just afford us a little time to go coho fishing on a favorite river! This time of year, we typically see a few moose around and today is no different. We come across a mom and her calf trucking right up the middle of the road. It is always best to hang well back knowing that they will eventually become aware of your presence and head off into the woods!
All is well at Alice Arm and at Anyox. It is a privilege to be able to work with an individual like Rob Bryce, the consummate outdoorsman and jet boat specialist, in such a pristine and remote area of British Columbia, Canada. Rob can be contacted directly through his company Northern BC Jet Boat Tours for information on his action packed guided tours.