For our team at Anyox Hydro Electric Corp. the past is also the future. Working side by side with our Nisga’a First Nations partners we are proud to be bringing back to life a long abandoned large scale Hydroelectric Dam facility as an official entrant into the “BC Hydro 2024 Call for Power”. BC Hydro is British Columbia’s Provincially owned electricity utility. Since its inception in 1962 BC Hydro has been responsible for providing clean mostly hydro based electricity for the citizens of British Columbia and beyond.
Straddled by Misty Fjords National Park and Alaska twenty miles due west and the Great Bear Rain Forest of British Columbia to the east Anyox and its up-channel neighbor Alice Arm remain two of Canada’s most iconic and remote ghost towns. Alice Arm and neighboring Silver City were both famous silver mining towns in the early 1900’s while Anyox, down channel some 18 nautical miles from Alice Arm, was home to the largest copper mine-smelter operation in the north half of the world until the Great Depression of the 1930’s shut down the operation and effectively shuttered the town of 3,000 residents. With BC’s Union Steamships and its fleet of coastal “Steamers” no longer actively servicing Anyox and Alice Arm, the population of miners and their families quickly vanished as quickly as they had arrived. The Nisga’a people of the Nass Valley called it “Gits’oohl”, or the “place out back” situated in their territory’s northernmost inlets. For literally thousands of years this place was a summer harvesting grounds teeming with plentiful populations of fish and wildlife.
For our team at Anyox Hydro Electric Corp. the past is also the future. Working side by side with our Nisga’a First Nations partners we are proud to be bringing back to life a long abandoned large scale Hydroelectric Dam facility as an official entrant into the “BC Hydro 2024 Call for Power”. BC Hydro is British Columbia’s Provincially owned electricity utility. Since its inception in 1962 BC Hydro has been responsible for providing clean mostly hydro based electricity for the citizens of British Columbia and beyond.
The 45 megawatt Anyox Dam “project will be capable of providing clean electricity on demand for thousands of households in British Columbia and will help to meet industry’s rapidly increasing demand for electricity in BC’s North Coast region.
The Anyox Dam, completed in 1922, was Canada’s largest concrete dam structure until the post World War II period. The dam serviced a town of 3,000 residents at its peak along with a very sophisticated electric railway, crusher and smelter operation. Today, based on extensive concrete testing, the Dam structure has toughened with time. Very positive compressive and density testing with several samples exceeding double the original design strength were encouraging results along with the lack of any alkali-aggregate reactivity issues render the concrete structure fully capable of being rehabilitated to its former glory. Similarly, the concrete quality and rock attachment profiles at the Anyox Number 1 Powerhouse are excellent. Seismic studies have shown the location to be at very little risk of a major earthquake but nonetheless improvements to the lateral arched struts of the Number 2 Dam at Anyox will be made to improve cross valley loading strength from the original design. Our team of engineers at Hatch Engineering have indicated that it is completely feasible to rehabilitate and bring into commercial operation the hydroelectric facilities at Anyox. We are very excited to have reached this milestone in 2024. Coupled with BC Hydro’s acceptance through the “CEAP” (Competitive Electricity Acquisition process) of our plan to connect to the BC Hydro grid we feel well positioned to provide a meaningful supply of firm and dispatchable electricity onto the BC Hydro grid with a projected on-line date of late 2028.
The Anyox Number Two Dam project is the largest of our Company’s five licensed hydroelectric projects situated in the project area. Over time we wish to help British Columbia meet its growing electrical needs while utilizing infrastructure originally built to service BC’s early mining industry.
Anyox Hydro Electric Corp. has worked hard to ensure that the projects contemplated do not negatively impact the natural environment, and in particular the five species of salmon that call the area home. We are very proud of our efforts over the years to create better spawning and rearing habitat including side channels and box culverts to help sustain the coho and chinook populations of the Kitsault River where our Company has re-built 28 kilometers of the former Provincial Highways #82 and #83 up the Kitsault River Valley. These species of salmon spend up to two years in their native rivers before venturing out to sea.
We are blessed to be working with several prominent elders of the Nisga’a First Nation who’s values and traditions have lasted for thousands of years. They share our long run approach to building out these major infrastructure projects for the benefit of future generations of British Columbians. It should be remembered that Independent Power Producers take all the licensing, permitting, financing and construction risk to build these major projects with full knowledge that no revenues will be received until such time as all the money is spent, and the project is commissioned, complete, and operational.
Thankyou for taking the time to read about our company and its future. Should the reader have an interest in visiting the natural beauty of BC’s northernmost tidal waters give us a ring. We have been offering guided Ghost Town tours of the North Coast and Grizzly viewing experiences for visitors from all over the world for the past ten years. These tours are informational and help shed light on the challenges being faced in the modern world as we try to protect the natural environment and its boreal forest dwellers while providing for rapidly growing human populations.
A major effort is currently under way to curb global warming by transitioning the world’s largest population centers away from coal fired electricity generation to much cleaner natural gas in a massive effort to curb global warming. BC is at the forefront of this movement as we have troves of natural gas in the northeast region of the province. Clean and renewable electricity is mandated to super chill and liquify the natural gas for shipping across the ocean to foreign markets. That is where we can help. We feel that our projects are relevant, timely, and necessary to meet the growing demand for renewable electricity.
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