ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
A12 | NEWS | THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2020
Seeing the Spring come in
O
ne attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in. So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his beloved book Walden. Unless you are a front-line worker (and how grateful we all are for those front-line workers who keep us safe and well-supplied!) you are working at home. With luck you may now have the “leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in,” a rare event in our modern world of ceaseless distraction. During these strange times of pandemic isolation, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to spend some time outdoors, in nature. Whether its raking leaves in your back yard, walking through a spring forest suddenly free of snow, or sitting by a creek and listening to the water run, being outdoors in the spring is a special experience that perhaps we now have the rare luxury to enjoy. Watching the solar come in Being a major solar geek, one of my personal spring “happy things” has been watching the solar come in. This is the first spring for my new 5,000 watt grid-tied solar array on my home near Dawson Creek, so while working at home I have had
DON PETTIT the opportunity to watch the snow melt off the solar array and the solar energy power up, big-time! Like most modern solar installations, my array feeds energy info via Wi-Fi to a website that displays my real-time solar energy output, plus graphs showing output over the day, the week, the month or the year. Mostly up here in the north we don’t care if our grid-tied solar array is covered with snow, because we have made so much power during our amazing long-day summers that we can coast through the winter using up our summer energy credits. In my case I actually want snow to remain on my rooftop solar panels as long as possible, because I count on that snowmelt to fill my cistern every spring. So as the snow melts off the array, each day I can see my power rise with the sun. A small pleasure perhaps, but one that has great meaning for those of us who get solar and the promise it holds. Solar energy is now the cheapest and most reliable energy source across much of the world, and for
DON PETTIT PHOTO
Don Pettit: “This is the first spring for my new 5,000 watt grid-tied solar array on my home near Dawson Creek, so while working at home I have had the opportunity to watch the snow melt off the solar array and the solar energy power up, big-time!”
that reason it is the fastest growing energy source ever. Clean energy hope While the fossil energy industry staggers with uncertainty (oil at minus $37 a barrel, $12 trillion divested!) jobs in clean energy are exploding. Last year was a tipping point in the U.S. and Canada: for the first time, more people held jobs in clean energy than in fossil fuels. U.S. coal, for instance, has steadily declined to about 50,000 jobs from a peak of 178,000 in 1985, while jobs in wind and solar now account for 769,000 in the US, increasing 12 times faster than the US economy. Energy efficiency jobs
now total roughly 2.2 million in the US. Another 174,000 are busy building electric cars. The parallels between the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change cannot be denied. Both affect every human being on Earth, no exceptions. Some countries chose not to participate in the World Wars, for instance, but there is no choosing with C-19 or climate change. The good news is that thanks to C-19 we have now proven that planet-wide, global collective action is entirely possible, exactly what we’ll need to address our next big challenge. And we already have the vaccine for climate change: clean energy!
“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it . . . We loiter in winter while it is already spring.” Spring is a time of new growth, new life, renewed hope and new opportunities. Let’s not “loiter in winter while it is already spring.” Don Pettit is a community columnist living in Dawson Creek.
Site C workforce at 4,896 in March Matt Preprost editor@ahnfsj.ca The workforce on Site C grew by more than 100 in March, with 4,896 reported, according to the latest employment figures from BC Hydro. However, BC Hydro says the count is a total employment number and a calculation of all workers who worked during the month. The March numbers do not reflect work being scaled back due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nor a reduction in clearing activities, BC Hydro said, noting those will be reflected in April’s employment report.
Workforce numbers are collected monthly from contractors, and the COVID pandemic has slowed or stopped a significant amount of work, including the powerhouse and spillways. BC Hydro has focused work on its river diversion system to meet a September deadline; Highway 29 clearing and road realignment, and transmission line construction continues. As of May 4, there were 827 workers reported at camp, with no workers reported in self-isolation. Of the March workforce, around 15% was local, with 751 Peace region residents employed as construction
and non-construction contractors. Locals made up 18% of the construction and non-construction workforce total of 4,123 workers, which includes work at the dam site, on transmission corridors, reservoir clearing, public roadworks, and camp accommodations. There were 3,454 B.C. workers, or 71%, working for construction and non-construction contractors, and in engineering and project team jobs. BC Hydro reported 205 apprentices, 353 indigenous workers, and 461 women workers on the project. There were six temporary foreign workers employed in specialized positions,
and another 55 managers and other professionals working under the federal international mobility program. Of the workforce, nearly 40% were labourers (650), heavy equipment operators (625), and carpenters and scaffolders (600). There were another 425 engineers, and 225 construction managers and supervisors reported. There were less than 100 workers reported in various other trades, including boilermakers, environmental inspectors, crane operators, electricians, mechanics, millwrights, pipe fitters, and welders. There were roughly 50 healthcare workers reported.