B.C. Hydro’s new, Northwest Transmission Line (NTL) is scheduled to be operational at the end of this month.
The NTL is a 344 kilometre, 287 kilovolt transmission line that runs from the Skeena substation in Terrace to a newly built substation near Bob Quinn Lake.
The hope is that the project will provide three things to Northwest B.C.
First, a reliable supply of clean power to potential industrial developments in the area.
Second, a secure interconnection point for clean generation projects.
Finally, to facilitate connecting the community of Iskut to the grid so it doesn’t rely on diesel generated power.
As stated before this transmission line runs 344 kilometres from Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake, that means that a 344 kilometre trail of forest needed to be cleared along the right-of-way of the transmission line.
Where did all this wood go?
The majority of this wood was burned roadside, in a controlled burn, instead of sold to local mills in Northern B.C., such as mills in Burns Lake.
The roadside burning of the cleared timber is perfectly allowable under the NTL environmental assessment certificate conditions.
And according to B.C. Hydro, once the contracts for the right-of-way clearing were handed out to the contractors, it became the responsibility of the contractors to dispose of the cleared materials.
The contractors took ownership of the cleared timber, free to sell any of the merchantable timber they saw fit, and received full compensation from those timber sales.
So why did only 22 per cent of the 495,000 cubic metres of cleared timber go to market?
When Allowable Annual Cuts (AAC) for companies with Tree Farm Licenses (TFL) are being reduced across B.C., how is it that only 110,000 of the 495,000 cubic metres of cleared, merchantable timber make it to market?
According to B.C. Hydro, one of the reasons for most of the timber being burned roadside is that the market for timber was depressed at the time the majority of the clearing of the right-of-way happened in 2012.
There just wasn’t enough money to be made to justify the hauling of the wood to the various mills near and around the project.
If the contractors assume full ownership of the cleared timber and are responsible for disposing of the clear material, why not negotiate into the contracts a clause, or stipulation that the majority of the merchantable timber cleared for the project is sold to mills.
Even if the money made for the contractors is next to nothing, they’re still being given ownership of an extraordinary amount of merchantable timber.
In comparison, Skeena Sawmill Ltd., TFL 41, which is located just 40 kilometres south of Terrace has an AAC of 128,000 cubic metres.
The merchantable timber that was cleared on the right-of-way of the NTL is nearly three times the amount that Skeena Sawmill Ltd. is allowed to clear per year.
If it is negotiated into the contracts that even 60 per cent of this timber (297,000 cubic metres) must be sold to market, that would have amounted to $14,962,860, if you use the Wtd. Average price from the October 2012 B.C. Interior Log Market Report.
Yet most of the merchantable timber was burned roadside.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?