Rutherford Creek

Last updated

Rutherford Creek is a tributary of the Green River, British Columbia, Canada, entering that river a few miles above Nairn Falls Provincial Park, near the village of Pemberton. The creek's headwaters are on the eastern side of the Pemberton Icefield, from where it flows southeast for the first half of its course, then generally east for the remainder. It is approximately 24 km (15 mi) in length. The mouth is at 50° 16' 3" N, 122° 57' 41" W.

Contents

Whitewater kayaking course

Rutherford Creek is the location of one of only two artificial whitewater kayaking courses in Canada, the other being in Ottawa. The course was built as a part of a run-of-the-river hydroelectric facility built by the private Rutherford Creek Power Ltd. in cooperation with the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, the BC Whitewater Kayaking Association and the Pemberton Snowmobile Club. It includes a channel with weirs, boulders, baffle walls, anchor pads and a classroom.

Hydroelecric plant

Rutherford Creek Power was built in 2004 by a partnership between Cloudworks Energy, Innergex Renewable Energy and the Lil'wat First Nation. The plant uses a 9 km (5.6 mi) penstock leading to a power house with two 25 MW pelton wheels. [1] The plant has an IPP agreement to sell electricity to BC Hydro.

2003 washout/flooding

Rutherford Creek became the focus of disaster relief when a Pineapple Express bearing more rain than has ever been recorded before reached the area, and was made worse because the freezing line was well above the elevation of the Pemberton Icecap, which began to melt in torrential fashion. Rutherford Creek is one of the main streams leading from that icecap, and the torrent which came down it wiped out the bridges used to cross it by BC Highway 99 and the BC Rail line. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, operating as BC Hydro, is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia. It is the main electricity distributor, serving 1.8 million customers in most areas, with the exception of the City of New Westminster, where the city runs its own electrical department and portions of the West Kootenay, Okanagan, the Boundary Country and Similkameen regions, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis Inc. directly provides electric service to 213,000 customers and supplies municipally owned utilities in the same area. As a provincial Crown corporation, BC Hydro reports to the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, and is regulated by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC). Its mandate is to generate, purchase, distribute and sell electricity.

Stikine River River in British Columbia and Alaska

The Stikine River is a river, historically also the Stickeen River, approximately 610 kilometres (380 mi) long, in northwestern British Columbia in Canada and in southeast Alaska in the United States.

Mica Dam Dam in Mica Creek, British Columbia, Canada

Mica Dam, a hydroelectric embankment dam spanning the Columbia River 135 kilometres north of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, was built as one of three Canadian projects under the terms of the 1964 Columbia River Treaty and is operated by BC Hydro. Completed in 1973 under the terms of the treaty, the Mica powerhouse had an original generating capacity of 1,805 megawatts (MW). Mica Dam, named after the nearby settlement of Mica Creek and its associated stream, in turn named after the abundance of mica minerals in the area, is one of the largest earthfill dams in the world. The reservoir for the dam is Kinbasket Lake, which was created when the dam was built. Water from the dam flows south directly into Revelstoke Lake, the reservoir for the Revelstoke Dam. Mica Dam is the tallest dam in Canada and second tallest in North America after the Chicoasén Dam in Mexico and it is the farthest upstream dam on the Columbia River. The dam's underground powerhouse was the second largest in the world at the time of its construction, and was the first 500 kV installation of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) insulated switchgear in the world.

Pacific Ranges

The Pacific Ranges are the southernmost subdivision of the Coast Mountains portion of the Pacific Cordillera. Located entirely within British Columbia, Canada, they run northwest from the lower stretches of the Fraser River to Bella Coola and Burke Channel, north of which are the Kitimat Ranges. The Coast Mountains lie between the Interior Plateau and the Coast of British Columbia.

The Hurley River is a major tributary of the Bridge River of west-central British Columbia that was earlier known as the South Fork of that larger river. It was for a while known as "Hamilton's River" after Danny Hamilton, an American who was among the first to settle in the goldfields region of the upper Bridge River. By the 1920s that name was changed to the Hurley River, commemorating one of the main pioneers of the Lillooet Country, Dan Hurley.

Lajoie Dam

Lajoie Dam is the uppermost of the storage dams of BC Hydro's Bridge River Power Project, which is located in the southwestern Interior of British Columbia. It is located just west of the small semi-ghost town of Gold Bridge. An earthfill structure, it is 87 m and impounds c. 570,000 acre-feet (700,000,000 m3) of water in Downton Lake Reservoir. The Lajoie Powerhouse generates 22 MW with an average generating capacity of 170 GWh/year. A few miles downstream is Carpenter Lake, which is formed by Terzaghi Dam, the largest of the Bridge River Power Project's structures.

The Williams Lake First Nation is a First Nations government of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation, located in the Cariboo region of the Central Interior region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, at the city of Williams Lake. It was created when the government of the then-Colony of British Columbia established an Indian Reserve system in the 1860s. It is a member government of the Northern Shuswap Tribal Council. Its main Indian Reserve is Williams Lake Indian Reserve No. 1, a.k.a. "Sugarcane" or "The Cane" or "SCB".

Jordan River Dam

The Jordan River Dam, officially the Jordan River Diversion Dam, and known locally simply as Diversion Dam, is a dam located in Jordan River, British Columbia, Canada. It is part of the second hydroelectric development on Vancouver Island.

Green River (British Columbia)

The Green River is a tributary of the Lillooet River in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Approximately 25 kilometres in length, it begins at the outflow of Green Lake in Whistler and flows northeast to join the Lillooet River about two kilometres above where the river flows into Lillooet Lake. Its main tributaries are the Soo River and the river-like Rutherford Creek, which is the location of one of only two artificial whitewater kayaking courses in Canada. Just below Rutherford Creek is Nairn Falls.

According to the International Hydropower Association, Canada is the world's fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world in 2020 after the United States, Brazil, and China. In 2014, Canada consumed the equivalent of 85.7 megatonnes worth of oil of hydroelectricity, 9.8% of worldwide hydroelectric consumption. Furthermore, hydroelectricity accounted for 25.7% of Canada's total energy consumption. It is the third-most consumed energy in Canada behind oil and natural gas.

The Pemberton Icefield or Pemberton Icecap, is the southernmost of the series of very large icefields studding the Pacific Ranges of the southern Coast Mountains in British Columbia, Canada.

The Seton Powerhouse is a hydroelectric generating station on the Fraser River just below the confluence of the Seton River at the town of Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. The powerhouse is fed by the Seton Canal, a 5 km diversion of the flow of the Seton River which begins at Seton Dam, just below the foot of Seton Lake to the west. The powerhouse is the last in sequence, and smallest, of the generating stations of BC Hydro's Bridge River Power Project, which diverts the flow of the Bridge River into Seton Lake. The powerhouse uses only 50 feet of head between Seton Lake and the Fraser to produce a maximum generating capacity of 42 MW and an average capacity of 330 GWh per year.

Fitzsimmons Creek

Fitzsimmons Creek is a large creek in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, having its origins at the Fitzsimmons Glacier in the Garibaldi Ranges of the Coast Mountains. For half its length of approximately 10 kilometres, the creek courses a U-shaped glacial valley which separates two ski mountains of the Whistler Blackcomb resort, Blackcomb to the north and Whistler to the south.

The Dokie Ridge Wind Farm is a wind farm located near Chetwynd, British Columbia, Canada. It was put into commercial operation in 2011. The facility has a generating capacity of 144 megawatts and is produces 320 to 340 gigawatt-hours of energy per year. . Electrical engineering consulting services are provided by Lex Engineering Ltd. BC Hydro announced the project was in commercial operation as of February 16, 2011. The project was built in partnership between GE and Plutonic Power Corporation. The wind farm has 48 Vestas V90 3 MW turbines, an electrical substation and seven kilometers of transmission line. The project cost about $228 million (Canadian).

Alterra Power Renewable power generation company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Alterra Power Corp. a subsidiary of Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., is a diversified renewable power generation company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was formed in 2011 through the merger of Magma Energy Corp. and Plutonic Power Corp. It develops, owns, acquires and operates hydroelectric, wind, solar energy and geothermal projects. On February 6, 2018, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. completed the acquisition of Alterra including all its assets.

Cloudworks Energy Inc. was a private, Vancouver-based run-of-river hydro developer formed in 1999. The firm's principals developed the 33MW Miller Creek run-of-river project and the 49.9MW Rutherford Creek project. In 2011 Innergex Renewable Energy acquired Cloudworks Energy Inc.

Renewable Power Corp. is a privately owned company based in Gibsons, British Columbia, which was established in 2000. Marc Soprovich (President) and Peter Schober are listed as the firm’s co-owners.

Haylmore is a location in the Bridge River Country of the southwestern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, located near the town of Gold Bridge just below the confluence of the Bridge River and its south fork, the Hurley River.

Independent Power Producer (IPP) projects have had a significant presence in British Columbia since the 1980s. Their relationship with BC Hydro grew from the province's need to supply growing energy demands and implementation of the 2002 Energy Strategy, which mandated that BC Hydro would purchase its energy supply from IPPs rather than generating the supply itself. There are a variety of power projects in BC, with the most popular being hydroelectricity and biomass projects. In recent years, more attention has been placed on the environmental effects of IPP projects and the social implications it has to residents living around the project development sites. Despite the decline in demand for new IPP projects, in 2016 they supplied 20,000 GWh, one-third of BC Hydro's total.

References

Coordinates: 50°17′00″N122°51′00″W / 50.28333°N 122.85000°W / 50.28333; -122.85000