Back when the Clinton Administration was in it’s infancy…[I know, that was the entire 8 years, up to the last-day vandalism of the White House computer "W" keyboard keys and stealing all the china they could], the then new Sec of Interior, Bruce Babbitt vowed that he wanted to be the first secretary to "tear down a dam." That mentality is moving here in California, the latest concerning the ongoing fight up here at the top of the state and south Oregon over the Klamath River and the allocation of its water. It came to a head in 2001 when Klamath Basin farmers found their tap shut off mid summer because of fish concerns.
The latest is a proposal that has been kicking around for some time of tearing out a series of dams for fish passage. Owned by PacifiCorp, they have been in place on the Klamath for over 50 years, generating electricity for, primarily, Californians use. At least 4 dams are in the target sights, They aren’t huge generators like Shasta Lake or Lake Oroville, they aren’t huge dams, but they are important in the overall grid picture when supply of electricity is one very hot day in LA from rolling blackouts, with new generators being built at slow pace, relying even more on natural gas. [This Klamath issue was written about in the LA Times yesterday and was one of the FR’s featured articles.]
Hydroelectricity, electricity that which is generated by water driven turbines, is the cleanest reliable renewable power you can produce. There are no emissions except for the complaints by environmental organizations. It’s renewability is kind of like Morton Salt: When it rains, it renews.
We get lots of rain up here. Yet California’s goofy laws allow hydroelectricity to only count towards the required "renewable electricity portfolio" if the size of the plant is 30 Mega watts or under. If over 30 MW, it isn’t renewable! I guess the rain that falls behind a 30+ MW facility isn’t as renewable as under 30 rain. Therefore, electricity providers must secure "other" power sources to meet this mandate, a mandate that requires 20% of their power to be renewable. The legislature, in its wisdom, worked to move the timetable for when that 20% must be met, up from 2017 to 2010. So you can count on your electricity costs to go up as we now must procure even more high cost solar or wind generated power…not to mention the lack of reliability of wind or that a day without sunshine is like…night
You get lots of good things from dams: generators, water supply, flood control and recreation for the boaters, skiers, and fishermen out there. But the answer according to the dam opponents is that it will "save" PacifiCorp ratepayers by tearing out the dams and buying electricity elsewhere.
Why? Because the heap of requirements to get their FERC generator license renewed will be so expensive after all the opposition lines up for their turn at the electricity provider’s smorgasbord to get their wishlist filled, that it’s easier to just tear ’em out. That’s your environmentalist solution, wear ’em down with unreasonable high cost demands before they can get their new generating permit. If they don’t get their way, then intimidate the government agencies with the threat of lawsuits until you do. Or just infiltrate government agencies until they are the public arm of the environmental organizations.
In the meantime, lets not care that the offsetting effects of tearing out the dams will have impacts on the sediment behind them or that you will have even less control over the water temperature that can be regulated to perhaps help fish with releases from dams. Or that the science and data on fish numbers and their true needs are still empty and subjective. We’ll just adopt the "lets stop it now" method that worked so well on forest management for the spotted owl and resulted in the "oops, we were wrong, the spotted owl is not endangered by timber harvest, but enhanced…aw, shucks." We can watch forests burn instead and import 80% of our lumber as well as small towns die as forest jobs leave. Likewise, we can now "just import" even more "other source" electricity from all our friends in other states that have Californians interests top-of-mind.
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