‘We want clean water back’: British Columbia town fights hydro plant

Undrinkable water, thick red slime and a powerful utility operator. For residents of a remote community in British Columbia, the last three years have been nothing short of a nightmare after losing access to a clean source of water.

But now, Hudson’s Hope has emerged as the unlikely victor in its battle against BC Hydro, the province’s utilities operator that is nearing completion on a controversial dam, after a standoff that a councillor says threatened the community with financial ruin and left it “exhausted, consumed and broken”.

Hudson’s Hope, a town of about 1,000 people, has long drawn its water from the Peace River in the north-eastern reaches of the province. But recently, a dam pushed through by the Canadian province has upended their water security and exposed the casualties of multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects.

The Site C dam was touted as a C$9bn (£5bn) investment when it was approved in 2014. Residents were told that the trade-off for generating 5,100 gigawatt hours of clean energy a year was the flooding of more than 5,000 hectares (12,300 acres) of land, situated in the traditional territories of the Treaty 8 First Nations and containing some of the best agricultural land in the province.

Since then, costs have ballooned to C$16bn, and experts have questioned the broader strategic value of the enormous dam due to begin operations next year.

Related: Construction of giant dam in Canada prompts human rights outcry

For Hudson’s Hope, troubles first began when the town was told by BC Hydro the eventual completion of Site C would require their community build a new water treatment plant – a shift that BC Hydro would pay for.

BC Hydro, the Crown corporation that oversees much of the province’s energy distribution, offered a like-for-like option to mirror their intake from the river, but the town was advised by consultants to instead drill a well for their water supply. BC Hydro funded that option but within months the well soured.

The result was “water that was absolutely disgusting”, said the town councillor, Tashana Winnicky. Residents were ordered to boil their water and families complained of children getting rashes. High levels of iron and manganese gave the water an orange and black colour. Hydrogen sulphide gave it a pungent odour and in order to remove it, oxygen was pumped in to aerate the water – in turn causing anaerobic bacteria to flourish.

“It produced a red slime that was on our equipment and in toilets,” said Winnicky, who also works as an environmental scientist and biologist. “There was no system that could treat this kind of water.”

Hudson’s Hope then received an emergency loan of C$2.5m from BC Hydro, with the aim of funding a temporary solution to the town’s water woes.

Only a portion of it was ever paid out, Winnicky alleges, with more than C$1.4m still outstanding. The town then went back to drawing water from the river, but the degraded quality of the water meant the town had to rent a temporary filtration treatment equipment that costs nearly C$32,000 monthly. The decision meant the council was left with little money to fund routine and necessary maintenance in the community.

Winnicky says repairs were needed on a pipe under one road, but the town couldn’t afford to pave over the road after the work was done. A children’s playground will not pass inspection next year and the council cannot fund a replacement.

“Over the last two years, we’ve had more middle-of-the-night calls than ever before,” said Winnicky. “We lost all of our senior stuff to burnout. The stress is indescribable. As people and as a community, we were falling apart. We needed help.”

“Our town is already suffering. We aren’t growing. Businesses are shutting down. This dam brought construction crews and road crews. Our town should be thriving. But it isn’t,” said Nicole Gilliss, a realtor in the community. “It’s extremely hard to sell a house in a town with bad water.”

Clouding matters is that half the town’s population are employed by BC Hydro, including a majority of councillors and the mayor. “They can’t speak up over fear of losing their jobs,” said Winnicky. “We’ve had to give up so much just to keep this town. And it still feels like everything is falling apart around us – because it is.”

On 20 September, BC Hydro said in a statement it “recognises the challenges” faced by Hudson’s Hope, given the “previous failure” of the town’s water treatment infrastructure – adding the decision for the town to build a well was done at the town’s discretion, not BC Hydro’s.

The utilities operator said it had already provided C$6m to help Hudson’s Hope treat its water and valued the “strong relationship” with the town.

Days before the community voted on a plan to borrow an additional C$5m for a permanent water treatment facility, however, BC Hydro changed its position and offered to fully fund the project and to cover the cost of operating a temporary solution.

“I’m happy they changed their perspective on their moral obligation to the community,” said Winnicky. “But all we have is an offer. We do not have an agreement. We’re still left with a lot of questions.”

BC Hydro says it will not comment on the issue during the ongoing provincial election campaign.

“If more people had been able to speak, would we have ended up in this situation? When BC Hydro employs more than half the town and people’s paycheques are on the line, it put everyone in a bad position,” said Gilliss.

Residents like Gilliss say the seemingly uncaring way in which the hydro operator handled the situation is a grim reminder of the balance between pushing ahead with massive, often over-budget projects and the communities that bear the effects.

“It really feels like our small size and limited resources were used against us,” said Winnicky. “We’re a small community under duress. We’ve been pushed to a breaking point. We fought back because we had no options.

“But we only want one thing. We want our clean water back.”