In 1989, the largest earthquake in eight decades hit California. Damage was deadly and extensive, including partial collapse of the vital San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.

UC Berkeley scholar Karen Trapenberg Frick wrote of the 25 years it took for Californians to build a bridge replacement. Dr. Frick said the project was “a cautionary tale to which any governing authority embarking on a megaproject should pay heed.”

British Columbia’s highly paid bureaucrats and political leaders were not paying heed.

BC Hydro first announced plans for a $2 billion hydro-electric power project at Site C on the Peace River in 1979. Premier Bill Bennett’s cabinet shelved the project in 1983, but BC Hydro had it rise from the dead in 1989. Two years later, Premier-for-Seven-Months Rita Johnston agreed BC was overdue for a concrete fix. Two years after that, the project was dead again as BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen concluded the dam was too costly and environmentally unacceptable…

The above is from Survival of the unfittest… megaproject written here in the summer of 2021.

Many people are to blame for Site C, a facility that will produce electricity at a multiple of the cost of other clean power systems.

Politicians didn’t want to oppose large-scale developments, or they owed favours to affluent trade unions. BC Hydro executives enjoyed highly paid jobs doing what the company had been doing for decades. Emasculated regulators lacked the ability or the will to challenge those who appointed them.

No persons in positions of authority were willing to listen to cautionary tales, particularly reports that warned about megaproject madness.

“Money often costs too much.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson