The Greening of Skiing

A cool bit on environmental news on an otherwise gloomy day: At the ski area Whistler/Blackcomb located in Whistler, British Columbia construction has just begun on the Fitzsimmons Creek Hydro Project. While damning up a creek doesn't sound like much, for Whistler this little project will produce a whopping 33.5 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. That's the equivalent of powering the resort's entire summer and winter operations, including all 38 of their ski lifts, 17 restaurants, 269 snow-making guns and a bevy of other buildings and services.

Even better, Fitzsimmons Creek is just about the perfect waterway for this kind of construction. It already has an abundance of water, the requisite vertical drop to power the damn, it is not a major fish-bearing stream, nor is the creek the centerpiece of any major recreational activity. As a sort of cherry on top, no new roads will have to be cut and the power lines can be buried so as not to disturb the scenery.

Any excess power generated by the single turbine will be sold back to BC's main hydro electric provider BC Hydro. Construction has already begun and should be finished in time for the 2010 season.

While all of this may not sound like much, ever since the Earth Liberation Front torched five buildings and four ski lifts on behalf of the lynx back in 1998, a bit of environmental focus has fallen on ski areas. While burning building may not be the way to handle the situation, the ELF's point-that ski areas have historically put profits ahead of ecology-was not lost on the resorts. In 2000, 160 of the nation's different ski areas all signed an ‘environmental charter' pledging to protect wildlife and plot future expansion along ecologically friendlier lines.

The Whistler dam is an excellent step in this general direction.