Rutherford Creek Power Project
Just 10 kilometres southwest of Pemberton on the west side of Highway 99, lies the 50-megawatt Rutherford Creek Power Project, which began producing electricity in May 2004. The project took less than two years to build and was developed under a negotiated Participation Agreement. The Mount Currie First Nation, which accounted for roughly 15% of the workforce, will share in benefits related to operations and its profits.
Rutherford Creek is comprised of a diversion weir on the creek, which draws the water through the penstock, dropping the water 370 metres to the powerhouse below, to two 25-megawatt turbine-generators. Another low-impact run-of river project along B.C.'s Sea to Sky corridor, Rutherford Creek made special concessions in the design of its operations to accommodate other watershed users such as kayakers and snowmobilers, including the construction of an 550 metre kayak park below the powerhouse.
"Rutherford Creek Power Ltd. is proud of the manner in which it has worked to bring local benefits to a variety of stakeholders including the Mount Currie Band, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, the BC Whitewater Kayaking Association and the Pemberton Snowmobile Club " said President David Andrews.
Andrews added, "We also went to great lengths to assure our project would assure minimum flow regimes maintain aquatic productivity and avoid any downstream impacts on water quality. We consider this project to be unobtrusive in terms of noise and visual impacts, and has a very small footprint."
In addition the project will offset 2.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years, based on an average BC displacement ratio of 0.4 tonnes of carbon per megawatt-hour of production.
The Rutherford Creek Power LP is a partnership between 647297 BC Ltd., a BC company managed by the principals of Cloudworks Energy Inc and Innergex II Inc. (Longueuil, PQ).
