A Trail landowner remains at odds with BC Hydro and the utility’s recent attempt to build a service road to transmission lines on his property.
Pend d’Oreille resident Jim Urquhart said he was out of town when the Crown corporation began constructing a service road through his property, next to an environmentally sensitive area.
BC Hydro had called and left a message on his answering machine saying they would be starting construction on an easement.
“Lucky I got home early from Calgary,” said Urquhart. “I listened to my messages, and thought those guys could be up there. So I tore up there in my quad and sure enough about 3:30 in the afternoon they’d been working up there all day with an excavator.”
The excavator operator had dug up about 200 yards of his land and Urquhart demanded they stop. He came back the next day, met the crew and they agreed to leave until he had the issue settled with BC Hydro.
Urquhart contends that Hydro made him an offer to build the easement, but when he did not accept and made a counter offer, the company rejected his submission as well, and decided to move forward with the road.
“This is how ridiculous it is. They sneak in there, hire a private contractor to come up there on a statutory holiday thinking I’d be away, and start ripping up my property.”
The Times contacted BC Hydro for clarification but details about the road could not be revealed.
“Although I can’t answer specific questions about our conversations with Mr. Urquhart or discuss the particular details of his property, I am happy to provide you with some general information on our statutory right-of-way (SRW) agreements and our approach to landowners,” said BC Hydro spokesperson Mary Anne Coules.
According to the SRW agreement registered on the title of the property, it outlines the rights that BC Hydro has been granted by the property owner and provides notice to all subsequent owners of the property that rights have been granted.
“A SRW agreement usually provides the right for BC Hydro to construct, operate, and maintain infrastructure on the land,” said Coules. “This includes access roads. Although we do not need further permission from the property owner to access the property or exercise our legal rights, we will typically notify them of the work in advance as a courtesy.”
Urquhart maintains that BC Hydro has access to several service roads in the area, and that they had planned to build the road for some time, yet, waited until the last minute to inform the landowner, starting construction on the access road without a response.
“There is a road already there that they’ve been using for 53 years, you didn’t need to come and do this, right beside a sign that says an ‘Environmentally Sensitive Area,’” Urquhart said.
As property values rise, Urquhart has tried to rally landowners across the province to demand fair payment for their land use. He entered into the SRW agreement with BC Hydro decades ago, and believes the contract needs to be revisited and re-framed for current values.
The landowner says he has been able to negotiate annual SRW agreements with Columbia Power Corporation, and that Teck Resources has also negotiated similar agreements with his neighbours. Urquhart is frustrated with BC Hydro’s unwillingness to renegotiate. He spoke to another landowner whose agreement was made in 1969, and she has been paid on average about a 1/4 of a cent per acre per day.
“What we’re asking for is somewhere between one and two dollars per day, which is still nothing but something we would accept.”
The Times asked Coules if BC Hydro would review it’s in-perpetuity SRW agreements and give landowners an opportunity to revisit their contracts as they do in other provinces?
“BC Hydro provides a one-time lump sum payment based on fair market value that is assessed through a qualified appraisal at the time that the SRW is established to establish rights in perpetuity,” Coules said.
“It is not BC Hydro’s practice to compensate owners again for rights it has already acquired and compensated the owner for. It is our responsibility to ensure a fair deal for both the property owner and our customers.”
Urquhart points out that BC Hydro’s power rates have not remained static over the past four decades, and that he and other landowners get paid very little considering current power rates and land values.
BC Hydro tells landowners that when a SRW goes through, they can’t stop them because BC Hydro has the right to expropriate the land if an agreement is not reached, said Urquhart. The only option, a lengthy and expensive legal proceeding.
“They only have to pay a one lump sum, the amount of money based on a land value. What landowners don’t realize, this is a skewed land value. On my property, they didn’t even send a land property assessor to look at it,” added Urquhart.
“If you’re forced to take that, which everybody is, over time your average land-use compensation is meaningless. Mine from BC Hydro works out to 1.3 cents per acre per day.”
BC Hydro’s gross revenue in 2022 was $7.5 billion, its net revenue yielded $668 million.
BC Hydro also announced a one-time surcharge for residential users on Sept. 1. To satisfy its recent Revenue Requirements Application, BC Hydro will charge each one of its 1.9-million residential accounts about $4 on their October 2023 electric bill.
