Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 27, 2009
3. Watersheds –
Boom in hydropower pits fish against climate;
The renewable energy could ease global warming, but the dams and turbines could result in mass killings.
Mike Eaton: To save Delta: Ditch the groundwater myth
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The first major fix in the long-awaited
As part of the project, officials also plan to widen more than 10 miles of the existing river channel leading up to the pool, which forms behind Mendota Dam.
The $100 million to $200 million project is considered a linchpin in restoring salmon in the river. The fish need a clear path around Mendota Dam to swim upstream to spawning grounds.
The bypass and channel widening are the first of many projects over the next seven years to re-establish the state's second-longest river. Limited experimental flows from Friant Dam are scheduled to start Oct. 1.
The San Joaquin dried up in long stretches after Friant Dam was built in the 1940s to provide irrigation water for a dying farming industry along the east side of the Valley.
The restoration is the result of a 2006 lawsuit settlement between farmers and environmentalists. Spanning nearly 150 miles at a cost that might approach $1 billion, it is the biggest river revival in the West.
The public is encouraged this week to reveal possible problems, solutions and effects in the bypass project, said Jason Phillips, river restoration program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Meetings have been scheduled Tuesday in
"I'd say this is the highest priority of all the channel improvements because at the Mendota Pool, there's a dam in the river," Phillips said. "Salmon don't do well with dams."
After six to nine months of study, the bureau is expected to release a range of options for the bypass and the channel widening. The project is scheduled for completion in late 2013.
The existing river channel in the area must be able to carry three times as much water as its current capacity.
The increased flow will help salmon move through the channel.
The big flow also will push water through dry spots along more than 100 miles downstream to the river's confluence with the
"It will probably involve building levees that are set back from the river," he said.
The Mendota Pool is 62 miles downstream of Friant. The pool, which is a wide spot along the river, is an important part of the complex plumbing along
The Fresno Slough from the south ends at the pool, carrying
The revived river will seep into area underground water tables, bureau officials said.
The ground water dropped dramatically over many decades due to farm water pumping and the lack of recharge from a naturally flowing river.
A resident in nearby Mendota said the region's ground water needs the boost.
"The ground water hasn't been good in Mendota for a long time," said Ed Petry. "I won't like it if the restoration doesn't help the ground water here." #
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1560384.html
Boom in hydropower pits fish against climate;
The renewable energy could ease global warming, but the dams and turbines could result in mass killings.
By Kim Murphy
Reporting from
But the dam in recent years hasn't produced as much power as it might: Its massive turbines act as deadly blender blades to young salmon, and engineers often have had to let the river flow over the spillway to halt the slaughter, wasting the water's energy potential.
The ability of the nation's aging hydroelectric dams to produce energy free of the curse of greenhouse gas emissions and Middle Eastern politics has suddenly made them financially attractive -- thanks to the new economics of climate change. Armed with the possibility of powerful new cap-and-trade financial bonuses, the National Hydropower Assn. has set a goal of doubling the nation's hydropower capacity by 2025.
Expanding hydropower is fraught with controversy, much of it stemming from the industry's history of turning wild rivers into industrialized reservoirs struggling to support their remaining fish. The emerging boom in hydroelectric power pits two competing ecological perils against each other: widespread fish extinctions and a warming planet.
The issue has been particularly contentious in the Pacific Northwest, where some are calling for actually breaching dams on the
"Hydropower does have pretty significant and serious impacts on rivers. We know that. The industry knows that," said John Seebach, director of the Hydropower Reform Initiative launched by the conservation group American Rivers. "It also provides some pretty significant benefits in terms of power production. So it's a tricky balance to get those benefits while trying to minimize those impacts."
Across the country, there are about 82,600 dams, but only about 3% of them are used to generate electricity. Hydropower produces about 6% of the nation's electricity, and nearly 75% of all renewable electric power.
The increasing mandates for power utilities to expand their portfolios of renewable energy are prompting dam operators to take a second look at thousands of dams now used for flood control, irrigation, navigation, recreation and industrial water supply that might also be used to generate electricity without further harm to fish.
"Most of the bang for the buck is at existing dams and reservoirs without hydropower facilities, and hydropower facilities that need to be upgraded for additional capacity," said Norman Bishop, vice president of MWH Americas Inc., which designed the dam improvements in
The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that there are up to 30,000 megawatts of potential energy at 5,677 undeveloped sites across the nation, more than half of which already have dams.
Newly added to the equation is the emerging market for so-called carbon credits. The credits are part of a strategy to place "caps" on damaging greenhouse gas emissions while allowing companies that can't meet the restriction to buy credits from ones that achieve significant savings. The cap would be gradually lowered to reduce overall emission levels.
Hydroelectric power is a prime candidate to sell credits because it is largely emission-free. The credits typically would be granted only for new or additional power.
The market for the credits is tiny now, but legislation is moving forward that would create caps and a national market that could ultimately reach $120 billion a year.
Even without a national cap-and-trade law, markets such as the Chicago Climate Exchange now allow companies to voluntarily limit their carbon emissions and lower their carbon footprint by purchasing credits, traded on the market like stock.
This added incentive has made building or upgrading hydroelectric facilities a more alluring prospect.
The small rural Chelan County Public Utility District last year became the first hydropower facility in the
The money the district has made from selling credits -- about $1.6 million so far -- is going back to
But the possibility of more hydroelectric construction around the world has set off alarm bells among some groups of environmentalists.
"Rivers in the U.S. have been seriously impacted by dam construction," the conservation group International Rivers said in urging California authorities to disqualify hydropower projects producing more than 10 megawatts of power from receiving carbon credits.
"Fortunately, some of this damage is now starting to be reversed by dam removals," the group said. "
Climate-change activists particularly balk at the idea of offering carbon credits in the
But here at Rocky Reach Dam, engineers say they believe there is a way to reduce emissions, increase power output and save fish at the same time -- although at a cost.
The
With the juvenile-fish passage facilities -- along with commitments to improve habitat and expand hatchery production for salmon -- the district could meet its targets for healthy fish and allow much less water to spill over the dam.
Five years ago Rocky Reach had to spill up to a quarter of its water over a 31-day period during the height of the spring salmon juvenile migration, but last spring it got permission to spill no water at all.
Yet more than 90% of the young salmon and 94% of the steelhead are surviving their trip past Rocky Reach Dam, according to district records.
The result is that the dam has been able to produce an additional 1.75 million more megawatt-hours of electricity over a recent three-year period, the equivalent of 702,204 metric tons of carbon if the electricity were generated at a natural-gas-fired power plant.
"What we have been able to do is provide more power with the same amount of water," said Tracy Yount, the
Mike Eaton: To save Delta: Ditch the groundwater myth
The remaining wet spots in the Cosumnes River channel in southern Sacramento County faded away earlier this month. Most of the river corridor from the foothills to the Delta will be bone-dry until the rains return.
It wasn't always so. Historically, the river helped replenish groundwater during the wet season, and in the summer, enough groundwater seeped into the river to sustain a rich corridor of life from the Delta to the Sierra.
The extensive pumping of groundwater, first by nearby farmers and then, increasingly, by Sacramento
Enabling this shift to excessive use of groundwater was a legal delusion: a premise that surface water is unconnected to groundwater. Under state law, groundwater, unlike surface water, can be pumped virtually at will, unless limited by local governments or the courts.
This legal delusion dates to California's early days, when water resources seemed inexhaustible, and salmon were abundant in our rivers and streams. It remains in effect today despite what science and common sense tell us: Water moves constantly from the surface of the land, pulled by gravity out of our rivers and streams to fill the dry space created below ground when water is pumped out.
Regulatory and legal structures may be rooted in the past and slow to change, but California is not. Our population has mushroomed from fewer than a million in 1879, when our current state constitution was adopted, to nearly 40 million today. And we've deployed energy and technology to store, move and use water in ways that early settlers could never have imagined, just as they could not have imagined the demise of California's once-large salmon populations.
The consequences of this disconnect – backward-looking law, forward-moving state – have become increasingly problematic in an era of growing competition for water and rising concern about the environmental costs of water diversions and groundwater pumping.
No setting illustrates these conflicts better than Sacramento
As a de facto user of Delta water, Sacramento ranks high. Its take of groundwater every year is equivalent to about one-third of the volume of the State Water Project's expected shipments this year from the Delta to the rest of the state.
Because the law pretends that groundwater pumping has no impact on surface flows, however, and because state regulators have yet to use existing authority to address the problem, local agencies have a free ride, acting as if they are not complicit in the ecological problems of the Delta and hold no responsibility for an important resource like the Cosumnes River.
Other Delta-dependent water users, recognizing the fragility of the resource and their vulnerability to cut-backs, have invested heavily in water efficiency and water reclamation, and come to the table as stakeholders to address the Delta's ecological and water conveyance challenges. Sacramento
Moreover, Sacramento
Without the pressure of a reality-based state water law, Sacramento will continue to lag on issues ranging from water-use efficiency to habitat protection and restoration. It's time for state regulators, policy makers and the courts to recognize the pull of gravity and articulate a modern legal framework to integrate the management of groundwater with surface water.
The current disconnect of state water law from reality fosters far more waste, inequity, economic inefficiency and environmental degradation than California can sustain. We deserve a consistent accounting for all water use, a uniform and science-based accountability for impacts, and a single standard for upholding the public trust and assuring reasonable use of water in an arid state.
It would be ironic if the state's capital region remained a poster child of the need for change. Better, it would seem, to anticipate inevitable reforms and embrace best practices now.
Mike Eaton has worked for conservation organizations for most of his career and is currently executive director of the Resources Legacy Fund. #
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2054701.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader’s services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news . DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of
No comments:
Post a Comment