Construction is underway at the home watershed of Hartley Bay for a small storage run-of-lake hydroelectric facility.
Hartley Bay is the home community of the Gitga’at First Nation, with approximately 150 core residents approximately 145 kilometres south of Prince Rupert.
David Benton is the clean energy lead for the Gitga’at Nation and is helping develop this one-megawatt hydroelectricity undertaking.
“The project will displace over 500,000 litres of diesel each year that BC Hydro currently burns to create the community’s electricity,” said Benton.
He estimates that, once built, it will meet 95 per cent of the area’s electricity demand on average each year for the next 40 years.
The power plant is 100 per cent Gitga’at-owned, and is expected to begin operations in October 2026.
British Columbia is home to 44 remote communities disconnected from the provincial electricity grid. Most of these are First Nations that rely on diesel generators to meet their power and heating needs.
“It’s a terrible thing for a community to have to live next to diesel generators," said Benton. "They create pollution. They are noisy. There’s interruption when fuel has to be delivered to the community. There’s always a threat of an oil spill. There’s been oil spills on the coast, and when they occur, it’s catastrophic. So that causes people to worry.”
The province’s Community Energy Diesel Reduction (CEDR) program invested another $2 million on Dec. 2 building on a previous $2 million for the project. Administered by the New Relationship Trust, this funding supports remote First Nations in B.C. in reducing diesel reliance and developing renewable energy plans.
Despite Hartley Bay’s location in a rainforest with around 4.5 metres of rain annually, during dry summers, they see low flows in the river, and the community faces drought risks due to insufficient water storage.
So, Infrastructure Canada invested about $16 million for drought prevention to build access trail roads to the upper lake for the Nation’s project. This enabled geo-technical investigations and the installation of the penstock (pipe) necessary for the hydro plant.
Benton says communities that use hydroelectricity typically use run-of-river and not lake, as Gitga’at’s will be. Run-of-river models do not have a reservoir capacity. Gitga’at's hydro facility will generate electricity by using an elevation difference. The dam will be raised three metres creating energy by water flowing in on one side and out, far below, on the other. There will be a storage reservoir that will collect water for times of need.
“Some years, there may be low flow years when we don’t meet 100 per cent of the community’s electricity needs, but we will always have water for water security; we will never run out of water,” said Benton.
He is collaborating closely with BC Hydro and Adrian Dix, the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions. The Gitga’at Nation is part of the Remote Community Energy Strategy (RCES) working group, which helps advance the project.
The Nation first conceived the plant in 2003, and Benton is thrilled to see it come to fruition.
“We’re very optimistic that it will be completed relatively soon,” he added.
