Voting is underway on a water diversion project that could pump $1.3 billion to the Black Lake First Nation.
That dollar value is what the community stands to gain over the 90-year life of the Tazi Twe Hydroelectric Project – if band members vote in favour of it.
Tuesday’s advance polling is taking place in Black Lake. Another one is scheduled for Friday in Prince Albert. The main community vote will take place in Black Lake next Wednesday.
All that’s needed for the project to go ahead is a simple majority of band members voting in favour of it.
If approved, the project would divert water from the lake to a power generating station and then back to the Fond du Lac River.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency ruled in July that the project will not have a significant environmental impact.
Project board chair Jamie McIntyre says the most common questions band members raise about the project relate to how it would alter the environment.
“We’ve been very careful to make sure that we were proposing a project that had the least environmental impact possible,” he says. “Obviously, you can’t have a project like this in this location without it changing the environment in some way.”
McIntyre says there are still some people who mistakenly believe this will be a dam — but he says it will actually be natural geography, and not a dam, that will allow the water to be diverted.
McIntyre also notes the band has had this type of project in mind for several decades.
“Don’t forget, this project has been on the minds of Black Lake people for over 20 years,” he said. “This just didn’t happen yesterday. In fact, they selected the expansion of their reserve, the Chicken Reserve, many, many, many years ago — they selected the land — specifically, because it was amenable to hydro development. So this has been going on for many, many years.”
McIntyre says the deal is structured so that there is a guaranteed return on the band’s $50 million investment, which the band will secure in the form of a loan. He says the band doesn’t have to start putting its equity into the project until it’s built and ready to operate. In this way, McIntyre says the community is protected from the financial risks normally associated with this type of project.
“This is a project that’s many hundreds of millions of dollars just to build,” he says. “So I think that it’s just the best overall deal that we can make for the band. The band doesn’t have to take any unreasonable risk and put, for example, other band programs at risk or other band revenue streams at risk. This project is going to deliver a cash flow stream to the band for the next 90 years.”
He also says an important aspect of the deal that drives the financial benefits from the project is Black Lake’s ownership stake in this partnership with SaskPower.
“The Black Lake First Nation pretty much insisted right out of the gate that they wanted to be partners,” he said. “In other words, it could have been set up in such a way where it was just a kind of royalty-type payment that would go to the band for the use of their land. But the band and the band membership at the time said: ‘No, we want to be owners. We want to be part of this.’ So, certainly, that underpins the entire deal.”
McIntyre also says they’ve made it clear that the people of Black Lake – and not the chief and council – will be in charge of the funds.
“This money that will come from the project will flow into a community trust fund that will be essentially controlled by the people of Black Lake,” he says. “Not the chief and council, but the people of Black Lake, will decide not only how the money is to be spent, what priorities the community has for this money, but also they will elect the board of trustees.”
McIntyre says that has been very important for the community – and the agreement prevents the chief or band councillors from sitting on the board of trustees.
He says the board of trustees will always include a professional trustee from an outside financial institution to make sure the funds are distributed in accordance with the trust agreement.
The community of Black Lake will net $3 million in the project’s first year of operation, and McIntyre says the size of the payments will only escalate from there.
McIntyre says if band members approve the project, construction might start in late 2016 or in 2017 – if other regulatory hurdles are cleared and everything goes as planned.
If approved, the Tazi Twe hydroelectric project will become one of the very few in Canada to be situated entirely on reserve land.