Wells Gray Provincial Park - Clearwater River Dams

Clearwater River Dams

The disastrous flood of the Fraser River in 1948 nearly changed the Clearwater River and Wells Gray Park forever. In November 1947, the Federal Minister of Public Works proposed the creation of a joint federal-provincial committee to study the Fraser’s water resources. The flood made this project all the more urgent and, in late 1948, the Dominion-Provincial Board, Fraser River Basin was established to report on power generation, fisheries, flood control, water supply and recreation. Between 1949 and 1954, the committee of ten collected basic data and filled in the gaps in other government studies. No report was produced, but, in 1953, 12 detailed maps of the Clearwater River between Hemp Creek and the North Thompson River were published. These had a scale of 1 inch = 500 feet and a contour interval of 20 feet. Over 50 years later, these sheets are still the most detailed and accurate topographic maps available of the lower Clearwater, although they are out-of-date regarding human developments.

The Fraser River committee proposed two dams, one just upstream from Clearwater and one at Sabre Tooth Rapids, but nothing happened. In 1955, the federal and provincial governments replaced this committee with a smaller one, the Fraser River Board, which had only four members. It was directed to determine what development of the Fraser’s water resources would be feasible, particularly regarding flood control and hydro-electric power. The Board published two preliminary reports, one about flood control in 1956 and one about hydro-electric developments in 1958.

The idea of developing hydro power from the Clearwater River and its tributaries was not new to the Fraser River Board. In 1918, Helmcken Falls was studied as a source of power for Kamloops, although the length of the transmission lines ended that notion. In the late 1940s, the Aluminum Company of Canada examined the power potential of Helmcken Falls, but chose Kitimat instead, thereby flooding northern Tweedsmuir Park instead of Wells Gray. In 1959, a comprehensive development of the Murtle River was proposed by the British Columbia Power Commission.

All these proposals pale in comparison to the final report of the Fraser River Board, issued in 1963. Although dams were proposed elsewhere such as on the Cariboo and McGregor Rivers and at the Grand Canyon of the Fraser, the Clearwater River attracted most of the attention with seven dams and five reservoirs recommended. The dams would be located 4 km (2.5 mi) upstream from the North Thompson confluence, at the lower end of Granite Canyon, at Sabre Tooth Rapids, near Myanth Falls (upper and lower dams), at the outlet of Hobson Lake and on the low pass between Hobson and Quesnel Lakes. Together, these dams would turn the Clearwater River into a 160 km long (100-mile long) series of reservoirs extending nearly to its glacial source above Hobson Lake. Each dam would back water almost to the foot of the next one, similar to the Columbia River today which has little free-flowing water. The dam at Sabre Tooth Rapids would be the highest at 137 m (449 ft), flooding most of Helmcken Canyon, inundating Sylvia and Goodwin Falls, and submerging the bottom 10 m (33 ft) of Helmcken Falls. The plan for Bailey’s Chute envisaged two dams; the lower dam at Myanth Falls would divert the river into a 1.7 km (1.1 mi) power canal ending at Bailey’s Chute. Collectively, the proposal (including the other rivers) was called System E and the cost of construction was estimated at $398,503,500.

There was little reaction, positive or negative, to the Fraser River Board’s report. In the 1960s, there was less leisure time than today, and the public was not too concerned about losing remote preserves such as Wells Gray Park, when British Columbia had so much wilderness land. The park may have been saved because the British Columbia government was preoccupied in the 1960s with planning and building (and paying for) the W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River and Mica Dam, Keenleyside Dam and Duncan Dam, all part of the Columbia River Treaty projects.

In 1971, BC Hydro, the provincial power utility, revived the Fraser River Board’s report and took a new look at the feasibility and costs of building the seven dams on the Clearwater River. Fortunately, in just a decade, the environmental movement had gained power and credibility in the province, and BC Hydro’s interest in the Clearwater quickly caught the attention of the Shuswap-Thompson River Research and Development Association (STRRADA) and the newly formed Yellowhead Ecological Association based in Clearwater, BC. One of the undertakings was to offer bus tours of Wells Gray Park during the summer of 1972. The tours stopped at viewpoints where the volunteer guides urged passengers to imagine how the valley would look when flooded by the dams. The strategy was very effective and succeeded in creating an uproar of protest about the dams. Within a year, the plan to dam the Clearwater River was quietly shelved, but BC Hydro retained its water rights until 1987 when the flooding reserve on the Clearwater was cancelled.