The Disposable Work Camp

Bear Flat Dispatch. April 24, 2025

Recently it came to light that after less than 10 years, the big expensive work camp at Site C may be to be destined for a landfill. That is a shorter lifespan than even the Trump Casino in Atlantic City. This has been a shock to everyone, including the PRRD who did not see this coming until a contractor asked about space in the Regional Landfill.

It seems apparent now that there never was a plan for what to do with the camp after the project was completed, and that does raise a lot of questions. I am no expert, but is it normal practice to simply dispose of a camp after one use on a megaproject? Can they not be designed to better adapt to future possible uses? Should there not have been a plan in place from the outset?

The devil would be in the details, but one would think there is a better way to handle this. We live in a province with an affordable housing shortage and a homeless person crisis, and taxpayer money is being spent in efforts to address both of those problems. Now we also have taxpayers (or ratepayers) covering the cost to dispose of a camp. We live in a world of finite resources where the importance of recycling and re-purposing is highlighted.

However, despite all of that, now we are told that the only solution might be to landfill the camp. I closely followed the Environmental Assessment Hearings for Site C, and this never came up. This sure puts another nail in the coffin of the “Site C clean energy” sales job we were all force fed.

Megaprojects like Site C come with a lot of hidden cost and waste, and workcamps are just one part of that. Fortunately, when it comes to electrical generation projects to feed into the BC Hydro grid, we can mostly avoid megaprojects if we choose to. Small scale distributed generation projects spread across the province can invigorate employment for local workers who can go home to their families at night.

Where possible, we should endeavor to reduce the need for projects with fly-in fly-out workers and multi-million-dollar disposable camps. The hard part will be finding politicians who can resist the lobby pressure tactics of the powerful special interest groups who salivate over the potential for lucrative public contracts that accompany megaprojects.