Power in the West
Small Hydro: The Wave of the Future?
When small hydroelectric-power plants are built in the wilderness, is it good for the environment -- or a death-knell for wild and free rivers and habitats?By Amy Linn, 8-21-09
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| Madison River. Flickr photo by H Dragon. | |
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Big public utilities these days are turning to the wilderness to produce power—on streams that are so remote, hardly anyone complains, according to a fine Wall Street Journal story by Jim Carlton.
The article kicks off with news about how the Snohomish County Public Utility District (from the area north of Seattle) is building a small hydroelectric-power plant on “picture-perfect” Youngs Creek in the Cascades foothills—with little opposition.
According to the story: “So-called small hydro plants like Youngs Creek are sprouting up across the country, with around 500 potential sites identified by a federal study in Washington state alone. Power managers are seeking ways to meet the growing demand for electricity without turning to sources like coal plants that are widely thought to contribute to global warming. Generating power from streams and rivers, while often controversial, produces few emissions.”
The downside?
The “dozens, if not hundreds of dams and small power plants could industrialize vast reaches of spectacular backcountry, while providing relatively little power. Aside from ruining prized whitewater rafting runs, the projects could kill fish, critics say, while carving up habitat for other wildlife, such as for bears and eagles, with roads, transmission lines and other infrastructure,” the Journal points out.
In Montana, the story notes, American Whitewater has joined with other groups to protest plans by Hydrodynamics Inc. to build a small-hydro plant on the Madison River outside Yellowstone National Park.
For more on American Whitewater and its lawsuit, click here. To email Jim Carlton, click .
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Comments
First, the electricity generated is minimal compared to many, many other alternatives. Once again, why can't this country learn how to conserve?
Second, small hydro causes significant alterations in the stream hydrology and stream ecosystems -- especially in fish populations.
Third, construction, power poles, and maintenance all mean: more roads into our prime hunting and fishing areas.
I don't kayak but clearly this completely ruins the streams for kayaking. In BC, kayakers are losing stream after stream. Kayakers should organize against these projects now.
In sum this is not a 'green' way of generating electricity. Utilities (PG&E;, for example) should not view these projects as green. What is green is a comprehensive conservation initiative. It's entirely viable to reduce electricity consumption by 20-25% in this country. Let's fully *exploit* conservation as our green alternative.
My guess is that there are thousands of similar sites to the one we used that could be used with neglible impact.
Small hydro has a small footprint, a small constituency, a small cost, when compared to BIG HYDRO....and big hydro isn't going anywhere. Big hydro is producing the preponderance of the renewable, cheap, dependable, non air polluting electrical power that is needed to fill the voids when the sun don't shine, or the winds don't blow, or the airshed can't take the smokestack slop from biomass burning. So small hydro is the sacrificial pig in the power game. Expensive to maintain now that most of the early hydro was small, and it is now not effective due to scale. So to say that now small hydro is a threat is just BS journalism. A non starter story. An attempt to stir up a conversation.
Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt, in tandem, made a concerted, full wally effort, to claim ALL the possible hydro sites on the unclaimed public domain and draw USFS Forest Reserve boundaries around them. One way was to claim them as "administrative sites for future use." In Oregon, if you look at a map, the dams are right on the line between the USFS and private lands. The boundary of the Forest. Or the BLM land. That was not accidental. It was Roosevelt fighting the "energy trust" of JP Morgan interests from New Yawk City, and the Chicago energy trust being assembled by Jay Insull. The Klamath dams are Insull dams from before the Pinchot-Roosevelt land grabs. Insull was brought in handcuffs in the 1930s from Chicago to Oregon to be tried by the Oregon Public Utility commission for price gouging or something like that during the Depression. Now his former assets are owned by Warren Buffett interests.
I rambled. It is saturday. Sorry.
Walt Kelly had it figured out. And that was made clear to me one day at a timber sale at some ranger station. I was sitting with another of my kind, the small mill timber beasts, and we were gossiping about this flamboyant dude with alligator shoes driving a corvette to a ranger sale. I remarked that he was a pretty smart operator, and is making some serious money because he bought lots of timber in a seriously depressed market by being the high bidder, and he now was using those profits to keep people like me from buying needed wood. I wished I had been that prescient. My cohort and fellow gypo mill timber beast, a guy who had whiskers on me by a couple of decades, leans over and whispers to me "And he is so damned smart he is not going to be able to save himself from his worst enemy---the guy wearing his shorts and those alligator shoes." Pogo's line was along the sense of "I have met the enemy and he is us."
Cheap clean energy, infinitely renewable, harms fish. There is no free lunch. And you can't kayak behind a dam and prove your mettle to others of your kind. tch tch. Whap whap whap smush whap whap.....the sound of clean, green, renewable wind power smushing another bird or bat.....
So now that most of the sacrificial low head dams, on small streams, are targeted for removal, the new push is to deny wind turbines on public land. In Oregon, that is 65% of the State. And some of the windiest. Now that you can live in a "green" condo in Portland, in The Pearl, and the wind power turbines now line the Columbia Gorge on both sides, for over 200 miles from just east of the Dalles to beyond Pasco and up the Snake, like a frigging giant bad Cristo art installation (maybe multi hued fabrics draped between the towers would lend a splash of color to the now vast ugliness of the wind turbine array across a whole landscape), the urban elites can get behind more kayaking chances and be an environmental warrior by demolishing dams. The glee. The unbounded thrill of seeing something destroyed, is elemental in humans. Especially bad boys. M-80s in the high school shitter. Cookies on Mr. Goodgardener's lawn. Falling timber. The sound of wood hitting a side of beef you hear when your fist connects with Mr. Badass's face. We all like to see things broken in a big way. Watching the demolition folks make a heap of the "Projects" brings a smile to the most dour of faces. The Environmental destruction derby in the name of "good" is what appeals to those who can't build anything that works. Like "Cash for Clunkers." It is over, and the private side did their job. The Feds have yet to. The keepers of universal health care can't seem to get started, yet, but they are trying. Steers try. Hot cows try. Neither gets it done. This whole energy deal is not well thought out, yet. Too many instant gratification proposals, and nothing substantive yet. And not for health care, either.
Low head needs higher volume, and high head needs less volume. Either way, small hydro cannot serve enough demand, nor can it serve the environment that people want. It is a non starter. And, when the Western States were admitted to the Union, made from the fabric of the various treaties and purchases by the US Government, all the water and the land under it was reserved for the states, or in the case of land never opened for entry, reserved for the US Govt. So the whole deal about small hydro is an administrative decision by a government. Private is not a party to the resource without permission from governments. And payments. If energy leases are like cabin leases from the USFS, having them double yearly, in a recession, is quaint. My friend has seen his annual lease payment for a place that is snowed in 8 or more months a year, go from $1300 to $2600 to $5200, in the last three years. It is for sale now. And, you pay property taxes on the "improvement" which is your cabin. The hoi poloi are going to be replaced by people with government connections and high salaries. They can afford green power and government leases because we are paying them too much in wages and benefits.
On the other hand, as a California resident I drink reservoir water, eat food grown by irrigation with reservoir water and use some power generated via hydroelectric. So it would not be logical for me to automatically oppose all reservoir and hydroelectric projects.
Whenever an old dam becomes obsolete I support prompt removal of the dam and restoration of the environment. The company that has profited from owning the dam should be required to do the cleanup, just like strip mining companies are now required to restore the land after mining has completed. These final cleanup costs should be factored into the cost/benefit analysis that determines whether or not a new reservoir project is constructed in the first place.
Thus, for all new reservoir/hydroelectric project proposals we need a full and honest accounting of ALL the costs and benefits of the project in order to decide whether the project should be built or not. Hydro proponents must abandon the big lie that hydro is all benefits and no costs.