The Environmental Assessment Certificate (EAC) and federal Decision Statement gave BC Hydro permission to proceed with construction on Site C, subject to a number of conditions regarding construction and operation of the project.
In addition, we obtained federal Fisheries Act and Canadian Navigable Waters Act approvals for the project.
While BC Hydro is exempt from a number of permits under the Hydro and Power Authority Act, we routinely apply for permits in the interest of transparency. This includes permits and tenures under the Forest Act, Land Act, Mines Act, Water Sustainability Act, Heritage Conservation Act, and Wildlife Act.
BC Hydro and the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development have also established a cooperative consultation process with Indigenous groups, aiming to conduct meaningful and timely consultation on provincial permits applications.
The Canadian Navigable Waters Act requires that work on unscheduled waterways be posted for public review and comment. We encourage you to review the below applications and provide feedback through the applicable portals.
We take compliance with the Site C Clean Energy Project's environmental requirements very seriously.
The project receives regular inspections from federal and provincial compliance officers and also retains an independent environmental monitor who inspects the project on a weekly basis. In addition to these external inspectors, all contractors employ their own environmental monitoring teams.
BC Hydro employs our own large team, located at site, which conducts daily compliance inspections across the project to verify compliance with the thousands of project requirements.
As of December 2020, BC Hydro had completed more that 118,000 inspections.