Image credit: City of Williams Lake
Williams Lake Power Plant

CRD calls for quick new deal to keep Williams Lake Power Plant open beyond 2025

Feb 4, 2025 | 10:33 AM

WILLIAMS LAKE, B.C. — The Cariboo Regional District (CRD) is calling for the B.C. government and BC Hydro to speed up a new deal with Atlantic Power to keep jobs at a power plant in Williams Lake.

While Atlantic Power has an agreement with BC Hydro until October 2029, the CRD says failing to revise it could close the doors of the Williams Lake Power Plant (WLPP) as early as late 2025. The WLPP employs nearly 30 staff and contracts with more than 50 suppliers. The CRD also says the WLPP is the City of Williams Lake’s largest single taxpayer, providing $1.7 million each year.

In a news release issued Tuesday (Feb. 4), the CRD says rising costs to transport wood waste from farther away, declining waste wood volumes from local mills and a threatened timber supply are all translating into higher costs to operate the WLPP.

“Premier David Eby has expressed numerous times that our electrical system in the north needs more clean energy to support economic growth for the entire province,” Margo Wagner, CSRD board chair, states. “It’s extraordinarily counterintuitive to cause the closure of an existing facility that already checks these boxes and produces huge benefits for its host community simply by refusing to negotiate a reasonable agreement.”

The WLPP’s future has been discussed at CRD meetings as well as further south to the Thompson Nicola Regional District (TNRD). Lorne Doerkson, Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA for the Conservative Party of BC, said during a TNRD board meeting on Dec. 12, 2024, that the approval of new wind farms in the province does not bode well for the WLPP.

“The Elephant Hill fire is currently being cleaned up and that is what we are using for fibre at plants like Atlantic Power. This is a green project,” Doerkson said. “These plants were built to generate power from waste from mills. It got rid of a beehive burner in Williams Lake. It’s shocking to me that we’re in this situation.”

The WLPP is a biomass-fueled electricity generating station that has been in operation in Williams Lake since 1993. The WLPP uses wood waste from mills and logging operations in the region to produce enough electricity to supply around 52,000 homes in B.C.