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Cumulative Effects:
This Is Not Just One Project
The Tunkwa / Logan Lake region is being pressured by multiple major industrial and energy developments at once. Citizens deserve an honest conversation about the combined impact on the land, surrounding communities, and the people who live, ranch, and recreate here.
Understanding the Bigger Picture
This region is already shaped by major industrial activity — one of Canada's largest open-pit copper mines, extensive pipeline and transmission corridors, and forestry operations. These existing uses are part of a landscape that also supports cattle grazing, recreation, wildlife habitat, and rural communities.
Now, multiple new proposals are being added on top of existing and expanding industrial footprints. Utility-scale solar developments, wind energy projects, mine extensions, and pipeline expansions are all advancing in the same broader area — often simultaneously, often through separate regulatory processes, and often without any coordinated assessment of their combined effects.
What may be presented individually as manageable can look very different when viewed together. A single access road, one fenced solar array, or one additional transmission corridor may each seem limited in isolation. But across the region, these projects interact — fragmenting habitat, increasing traffic, displacing recreation, reducing grazing land, and transforming the visual character of the landscape.
This is not anti-progress rhetoric. This is about scale, concentration, and fairness. People living near or using this area are entitled to ask whether this rural region is being over-targeted — and whether cumulative effects are being considered early, not after projects are already entrenched.
The project's own Initial Project Description acknowledges cumulative effects as a relevant issue and notes the area already includes forestry, cattle grazing, nearby industrial development, and other reasonably foreseeable projects.
Red: proposed and existing industrial project areas. Green: Tunkwa Provincial Park.
Note: Outlined areas are approximate and represent the broader industrialization of prime ranchland and active grazing tenure.
Projects in the Wider Area
Existing, proposed, expanding, or in development — these are the major industrial and energy projects overlapping in the Tunkwa / Logan Lake / Ashcroft / Highland Valley corridor.
m.ah a temEEwuh Solar Project
A proposed two-phase utility-scale solar development — Phase I at 104 MW and Phase II also described as 104 MW — on Crown land near Tunkwa Lake, within a landscape currently used for cattle grazing, forestry, and recreation.
Status: In early engagement / environmental assessment
Highland Valley Wind Project
A proposed wind energy development in the Highland Valley area, adding large-scale turbine infrastructure to the same broader ranchland and grassland corridor.
Status: Various stages of development
Enbridge Sunrise Expansion
Expansion of existing pipeline infrastructure in the broader region, increasing the capacity and footprint of the Westcoast / Enbridge pipeline system.
Status: Various stages of expansion / operation
Highland Valley Solar + Storage
A proposed solar and energy storage development near Ashcroft, adding another utility-scale solar footprint in the same broader region.
Status: Various stages of development
Highland Valley Copper Mine Extension
Continued open-pit mining operations and expansion at one of Canada's largest copper mines, located in the heart of the Highland Valley corridor.
Status: Operating / expansion in various stages
quA-ymn Solar Facility
An existing utility-scale solar project in the broader region. BluEarth and NNTC / partners have identified it as part of their renewable development footprint in the area.
Status: Existing / operational
Cache Creek Wind Project
A proposed wind energy development north of Ashcroft, adding turbine infrastructure to the broader Thompson-Nicola region.
Status: Various stages of development
Why Cumulative Effects Matter
Each project below may claim limited individual impact. But impacts compound, fragment, and interact across the same landscape.
Ranchland & Grazing Pressure
Each new fenced project removes grazing land and fragments ranch operations. Individually, each claims a manageable area. Together, they steadily reduce the viable grazing landscape that ranchers and tenure holders depend on.
Wildlife Movement & Habitat Fragmentation
Wildlife does not respect project boundaries. Multiple industrial footprints, fences, roads, and transmission corridors create compounding barriers to movement, reduce habitat connectivity, and degrade the ecological function of the broader landscape.
Industrial Traffic & Haul Routes
Construction, operations, and maintenance traffic from multiple projects shares the same limited rural road network. The combined load — heavy equipment, oversized loads, crew vehicles — exceeds what these roads were designed for and creates safety, dust, and disruption impacts for residents and ranchers.
Visual Industrialization of Open Country
A single project may claim limited visual impact. But when solar arrays, wind turbines, mine pits, substations, transmission lines, and pipeline corridors are viewed together, the landscape is no longer rural — it becomes an industrial corridor.
Recreation Displacement
Hunting, fishing, off-road vehicle use, hiking, and backcountry recreation depend on open, accessible, undisturbed land. As each project removes or restricts access, the cumulative effect is a steady erosion of the recreational value that defines this region for residents and visitors.
Loss of Rural Character
Rural communities near these projects chose this landscape for a reason. The stacking of industrial infrastructure changes what it means to live, ranch, and recreate here — not through one project alone, but through the combined transformation of the surrounding landscape.
Pressure on Nearby Communities
Logan Lake, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, and surrounding areas absorb the combined effects of multiple projects — increased traffic, construction disruption, workforce demands, and long-term industrial presence — without proportional benefit or adequate consultation.
Precedent for Even More Projects
Once industrial corridors and project infrastructure are established, they make further development easier to justify. Each approval lowers the threshold for the next proposal, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of industrialization.
One Region. Multiple Major Projects.
The purpose of this overview is to help the public understand the combined industrial footprint and pressure across the region — not just single-project boundaries in isolation.
Interactive regional map coming soon. This placeholder identifies the key locations and project types clustering in this corridor.
What the Official Materials Already Acknowledge
Even the project documents recognize that this landscape is already layered with other uses and developments. The m.ah a temEEwuh project materials note:
Current land uses in the project area include forestry and agricultural cattle grazing.
Access to the project area is via Tunkwa Lake Road.
Cumulative effects are identified as a relevant consideration for the environmental assessment.
Nearby notable developments include the Highland Valley Copper mine, BC Hydro transmission lines, the Westcoast / Enbridge pipeline system, and proposed wind development in the region.
BC Hydro's Call for Power: An Upstream Driver of Cumulative Effects
The concentration of industrial energy projects in the Tunkwa / Logan Lake / Highland Valley area is not a coincidence. Many of these proposals are a direct response to BC Hydro's Call for Power — a competitive procurement process through which the provincial utility solicits new electricity supply from independent developers.
When BC Hydro issues a Call for Power, it creates a commercial signal. Developers respond by identifying sites where they can build large-scale generation facilities quickly and cost-effectively. In practice, that means targeting areas with existing transmission infrastructure, road access, and large tracts of available land — conditions that are commonly found on ranchland, Crown range, and rural grasslands in the BC Interior.
The result is that regions like the Tunkwa / Logan Lake corridor become focal points for multiple competing proposals at once. Each developer submits independently, and each project enters its own regulatory process. But on the ground, the effects are experienced together — by the same communities, on the same landscape, and across the same road networks, watersheds, and wildlife corridors.
In practical terms, the Call for Power translates into a range of on-the-ground changes that compound across projects:
- Large land footprints — hundreds to thousands of hectares per project, often on grassland or active grazing tenure
- Perimeter fencing that fragments open rangeland and restricts wildlife movement
- New or expanded substations and transmission corridors connecting generation sites to the grid
- Road upgrades, new access roads, and changes to established rural travel routes
- Habitat fragmentation from the combined footprint of roads, fencing, and cleared areas
- Sustained pressure on grazing operations and rural land use continuity
- Long-term visual and landscape change across what has historically been open, working country
None of these effects are unique to a single project. But because the Call for Power incentivizes multiple developers to target the same type of landscape at the same time, the cumulative burden on any one region can be substantial — even if each individual project is assessed in isolation. This is a land use and cumulative effects issue, not simply a question of electricity supply. The procurement decisions made upstream by BC Hydro have real downstream consequences for the communities, ecosystems, and working landscapes that absorb the resulting development.
At What Point Does "One More Project" Become Too Much?
How many large industrial and energy projects can one rural region absorb before the character of the land is permanently changed?
Who decides what is an acceptable cumulative burden — and are local residents, ranchers, recreation users, and nearby communities meaningfully part of that decision?
Are the people who live nearest these developments being asked to absorb an unfair concentration of impacts — while benefits flow elsewhere?
Should this region continue to be treated as open industrial space simply because it is rural?
Help Demand a Full Cumulative Effects Conversation
Review the list of projects. Share local knowledge or overlooked concerns. Submit comments during the environmental assessment process. Ask decision-makers to assess the combined impact — not just each project separately.
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