Community groups will be asked to deliver fish and wildlife programs after BC Hydro laid off the regional Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program staff in Nelson last week.
“We are looking everywhere we can to be more efficient and to do more with with less,” Chris O’Riley, BC Hydro’s executive vice-president for generation, told the Revelstoke Times Review. “We believe there are opportunities in the FWCP for efficiencies in terms of how we deliver the program and these cuts to staff in Nelson are all about that.”
“In my opinion this is a shell game,” commented Gwenne Farrell, the COPE Utilities representative.
She pointed out that three mandatory funds, including the one in the Columbia Basin, were set up to compensate for the losses experienced as a result of BC Hydro dams.
“The trusts are used to fund all of the costs of the program, including labour,” she said, “So how is [BC Hydro] saving money?”
“They’re contracting out the work so they don’t have to count them as employees any more,” Farrell said, which makes the Crown corporation look leaner without actually saving any money, she noted.
One of Farrell’s frustrations as a BC Hydro customer is that the company is getting rid of already deeply knowledgeable staff and replacing them with contractors.
The staff losses in the FWCP are part of the more than 300 layoffs announced by BC Hydro last week. Thirty-six members of the corporation’s environmental staff are among the cuts, including one in Revelstoke as well as the staff in Nelson.
“It’s obviously just word games,” said Nakusp Rod and Gun Club director Hank Scown, “you can’t lay off that number of people and not obliterate the program.”
“Who do you phone to get somebody to come and talk to a local community about the fisheries or the fertilization?” he questioned, “Somebody that nobody’s ever heard of, who doesn’t know where Beaton or Burton or the Columbia River is?”
According to BC Hydro’s website, FWCP spends $3.2 million annually on fish and wildlife projects in the Columbia River basin. These include lake restoration, habitat restoration and species monitoring.
O’Riley said the money saved by laying off staff will be used to fund programs run by community groups. “I think we’ll see more money going into the environment as a result of this particular change.”
He did not provide specifics on how the programs would be run but did say a manager would remain in Castlegar, B.C.
“The fish and wildlife part has been neglected because there’s no money in it,” Scown stated, “That part’s not going to get any attention from this government.”
Hans Dummerauf, Chair of the Arrow Lakes Environmental Stewardship Society (ALESS) agreed.
“It’s a shame the environment is put on the back burner,” he said, noting too the worrying nature of jobs leaving the region.
“For a giant like BC Hydro [to cut back local jobs], it’s not promising for the future,” said Dummerauf.
The changes are modelled on the Coastal FWCP, which operates by providing funding to environmental and other community groups, said O’Riley.
He said BC Hydro would work with community groups, the Ministry of the Environment and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to run the programs.
It is also unclear how cuts to BC Hydro’s environmental staff will impact its work in that area, such as the ongoing studies relating to the Columbia Water Use Plan. Most of those studies are being done by contractors but O’Riley said BC Hydro would be “more efficient about how we manage those contractors.”
“We’re really just trying to do more with less, as many organizations are doing,” he added.
“It’s very disappointing, and at the same time not surprising, said Scown, expressing the frustration he feels, “The people in this valley have seen this time and time again. It’s about money and we’re in the way.”