Troubled Waters
Will conflicting environmental goals cloud the future of clean hydropower?

For 86 years, the Edwards Dam at Augusta, Maine, borrowed the momentum of the Kennebec River to produce a modest but reliable supply of emissions-free electricity.
Since Martin Van Buren lived in the White House, a dam at Augusta converted the Kennebec’s southward run to the Atlantic Ocean into mechanical energy for nearby factories. In 1913, with a long career already behind it, the structure was modified for hydroelectric generation.
More than eight decades later the owner, Edwards Manufacturing Company, began a multi-year process of relicensing the operation. Matters of this sort are the province of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and at the end of November 1997, FERC ordered—for the first time ever—that the owner of a functioning hydropower facility be not only denied a new license but also made to remove the structure entirely.
The unprecedented FERC action should have been no surprise, given the formidable array lobbying against the dam: the Governor of Maine, three state agencies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior, and activist groups including Trout Unlimited and American Rivers.
Legal wrangling ensued. Not least among the issues was the Edwards Company’s desire that it not be saddled with demolition costs—estimated by FERC at $2.7 million—for a facility it wanted to continue running.
But FERC staff members had concluded that installing their preferred design of fishways would make the dam uneconomical to operate. And as to the company’s objection to paying removal costs, Margaret Bowman of American Rivers was quoted in The Wall Street Journal saying, “As a child, I was taught that when you’re finished playing in the sandbox, you should pick up your toys before you go home.”
The situation was resolved when a major area industry and owners of dams upstream agreed to pay the demolition costs in exchange for considerations related to their use of the river. On July 1, 1999, the Edwards Dam was breached and 17 miles of the Kennebec flowed free for the first time in 162 years.
Removal advocates proclaimed victory for Atlantic salmon, striped bass, sturgeon, alewives, eels, and other species that would add the reclaimed habitat to the 40 miles between the dam and the ocean.
Some see eliminating dams as a mission, and the Edwards was a plump target and logical candidate for their first win. Its 3.5-megawatt output was no doubt useful but unlikely to have turned the tide in a power crisis. And it was expensive, wholesaling electricity to the Central Maine Power Company at nearly 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, one and-a-half times what the typical Wisconsin electric cooperative member pays at retail.
But if the Edwards' demise is no mystery, hundreds of dams are up for relicensure in the coming years, and events predict few will have an easy ride.

A co-op’s homegrown hydro

Like the Edwards, the Stiles Hydro Project operates on a site where there's been a dam for more than 150 years. Unlike the Edwards, Stiles is a bargain for the customers. Owned and operated by Oconto Electric Cooperative, it churns one megawatt of power from Wisconsin’s Oconto River, 12 miles above its mouth on Green Bay.
Run on a “limited peaking” basis, Stiles holds water in reserve for generation in periods of greatest electricity demand. Usually measured in hours, those times are when spot-market wholesale power is costliest. Oconto Electric’s ace in the hole, Stiles allows the co-op to make some of its own electricity when it’s most needed, paring down premium prices members would otherwise have to pay.
This fall, Oconto Electric was nearing completion of an arduous relicensure. The difficulties arose not from FERC or from activist organizations, but from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
The co-op has toiled at relicensing since 1995, with the DNR seeking to impose conditions making Stiles Hydro more expensive and less useful to run. The key concern has been the co-op’s need for a DNR Water Quality Certificate under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act, which allows state environmental agencies to intervene in renewal of licenses under FERC jurisdiction.
Initially, the DNR sought to require:
• a fish protection system costing an estimated $1–4 million, up to four times the dam's value;
• operating in “run-of-river” mode: using whatever energy the river's flow provides at a given time, not storing water for use at peak demand, and thus ending the dam’s chief benefit;
• state-of-the-art gauging stations to monitor compliance with run-of-river operation, a far more expensive way to obtain data already provided by lower-tech devices.
Oconto Electric requested a hearing in hopes of mitigating the requirements. Meetings were held with agency personnel including then-Secretary George Meyer. Negotiations dragged on. The co-op indicated willingness to take its chances in court, rather than submit to demands it viewed as excessive.
Last-minute efforts brought a settlement this year. Oconto Electric will deposit $40,000 annually for five years in a special fund for fish protection, and the DNR will decide how to use it depending on available technology 20 years from now. The co-op can continue limited peaking operations for three years from issuance of a new license. Present equipment, rather than high-tech devices, will be deemed suitable to monitor compliance.
It's now in FERC’s hands, and the co-op anticipates receiving a new license soon.

The fish don’t mind

The licensing conditions sought by the DNR for Stiles Hydro might suggest fish habitat on the Oconto River is in dire straits. Not so.
Steve Heimerman of Oconto has fished the area for decades, and says there’s quality fishing on either side of the dam.
“They’re both very good fisheries but totally different. Below the dam it’s primarily a migratory fishery which includes state record-quality fish of almost any species you can think of that use the bay,” Heimerman says. “There are monster walleyes and monster northern of 30 pounds and more. It’s highly seasonal, but if you concentrate on that river, you’ll catch trophies. Above the dam it’s a quality fishery for bass and panfish.”
Brian Doubek of Oconto knows the opportunities above the dam. He’s fished on the Machickanee Flowage since 1992, and calls the Oconto’s reputation “great, compared with other places in the state.”
Bass clubs from across Wisconsin hold tournaments on the flowage, according to Doubek. “I’ve seen as many as 80 boat trailers in the parking area,” he says, noting that he and his friends “typically fish from daylight to 8 a.m. and then leave because there are so many people.”
Things weren’t always so good. In the 1970s, the river's environmental problems began attracting serious attention. Stiles Dam wasn't the cause; in fact, the dam arguably prevented pollution problems downstream, or at least substantially mitigated them.
The problem was sludge from a Scott Paper Company mill in Oconto Falls. Released by the pulping operation, toxic metals like mercury and arsenic had accumulated in bottom sediments over the six miles from the mill to Stiles Hydro. Thanks to the dam, the toxins largely settled out before they could enter the lower reaches of the river and Lake Michigan.
By the late 1970s, the Machickanee Flowage was prime carp habitat and not much else. Heimerman says gamefish populations at that point were “pretty pathetic.” Employed then by Scott Paper, he quickly became a leader in volunteer restoration efforts when the State of Wisconsin sued the company and obtained a million-dollar settlement to help clean the river.
It was decided that natural decomposition and drying would eliminate or seal up noxious sediments. In the fall of 1980, the dam was opened, the flowage drained to the old river channel, and nature left to take its course. About a year later, the remaining gamefish were netted, the rough fish disposed of in a DNR-authorized poisoning, and the flowage reflooded. Heimerman compliments DNR management of the cleanup, saying the agency “did a very nice job, with lots of town meetings and opportunities for people to ask questions and get involved.”
The result today is "good wherever you go, just a good watershed,” Doubek says.
Both men are emphatic that if the dam weren’t there, a high-quality fishery would be lost.
“I’m not the world’s greatest dam fan but there’s got to be a practical reason to remove one,” Heimerman says. “Take out every dam on the Oconto and you finally come to the waterfall at Oconto Falls, just the way it’s been since God made it. It’s not real practical to say taking out the Stiles Dam is going to make a better fishery below, when it’s going to destroy the one above it.”

Blackout insurance

Dairyland Power Cooperative of La Crosse is relicensing another hydro facility, this one on the Flambeau River near Ladysmith.
“I’ve devoted about 10 years of my life to getting this done,” says George Johnston, Dairyland senior environmental biologist and relicensing point man for Flambeau Hydro.
Flambeau has had a federal license for 51 years and Dairyland hopes for a new one covering 30 more. Johnston thinks FERC will grant it—in about a year and a half.
Meanwhile, what he seems to regard as the most critical test has been passed. In October, the DNR issued a conditional water quality certification under its Clean Water Act authority.
Asked if that was difficult, Johnston makes clear it’s a sore spot. “The DNR’s policy is to treat water coming through a dam and its turbines as discharge, as if it were wastewater,” he says.
Asked why this would be so if nothing is put into the water, he says, “I guess I’ve been asking that same question,” adding, “We disagree strongly but it doesn’t matter; the courts gave them that authority.”
Flambeau Hydro has 22 megawatts of generating capacity. Johnston says he can’t recall a time when it made the difference for Dairyland in meeting peak demand, but says it serves a potentially far more important function: Flambeau has “blackstart”capability that could rescue a utility and its customers or even a whole region.
“Say your entire system goes down for some reason. You need electricity to restart it. The Flambeau is essential because the water gives you the ability to produce the power you need to restart the rest of the system,” he explains.
The scenario is disturbingly easy to imagine. Just one major high-voltage transmission line connects eastern Wisconsin with western Wisconsin and power sources farther west. At least twice since 1998, thunderstorms have disabled that line. The power it carried had to go someplace, and it overloaded smaller lines, causing outages. Only the fact that this occurred at times of slack demand prevented cascading outages capable of blacking out a half-dozen states and part of Canada. On one occasion, system operators have said, such outages were only seconds away.
If the value of Flambeau Hydro is in dispute, the next thunderstorm might settle the question.

Clean, valuable and limited

Hydropower is a valuable but minor component of Wisconsin’s energy production. The significant sites have been developed. Improved technology can increase their capacity, but marginally. The state has about 500 megawatts of hydro and could add perhaps 40 more, according to Mike Vickerman, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin.
Vickerman and RENEW have successfully advocated boosting renewable energy in the state’s portfolio—especially wind power—and helped shape electric reliability legislation in the late 1990s.
Leading an organization focused on environmental concerns, Vickerman brings an unusually balanced perspective to the simmering debate on the future of hydropower. “Every energy source involves tradeoffs,” he notes. “Hydro often serves a nearby load, so it provides grid support as well as displacing fossil generation. And one has to balance or weigh the avoided air emissions hydro provides as part of the overall assessment.”
Back in 1998, Vickerman spelled out the practical meaning of those ideas in a letter to DNR Secretary Meyer, seeking agency cooperation in relicensing Stiles Hydro.
That little dam, Vickerman wrote, “produces about five million kilowatt-hours of emission-free electricity each year. Replacement output from the state’s electric system would result in an increase of 64 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually, or 32,000 tons.”
He intended no blanket endorsement. “You could make a pretty strong argument that most Pacific Northwest hydro capacity is considerably more damaging than it had to be,” Vickerman says, objecting to the sheer size of the projects. He also speaks of “the specter of Canadian hydro,” which he decries as an example of oversized development flooding out environmental resources and native cultures.
“They’re arms of the provincial governments, and they are not accountable to the landowners or their ratepayers,” he says.

Tradeoffs have payoffs

The big Canadian hydro installations are probably going to stay right where they are, and so are big dams in the Pacific Northwest, though the latter are increasingly under activist attack.
What will probably matter in the end is that even if the activists are right about the environmental costs, more than 80 percent of the Northwest’s electricity comes from hydropower. No dams are likely to come down before the activists line up in support of power plants to replace them.
With small dams, it’s different. The American Rivers web site listed almost 50 across the U.S. scheduled for removal this year. Only two were active hydropower operations—one in Michigan and one in Wisconsin. Most were described as structures in disrepair or no longer serving a useful purpose.
But if not every dam is needed, neither is every dam without benefits. Life's tradeoffs put a heavy burden on those trying to have it both ways, demanding elimination of air emissions while ruling out practical remedies. Voith Siemens Hydro Power, a German company selling technological upgrades for hydroelectric facilities, recently claimed the capacity of America’s existing dams could be enhanced by 30,000 megawatts—enough emissions-free electricity to run approximately 30 million homes.
For most people, hydropower is not controversial. For a few, it’s the focus of a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between human activity and the natural environment. But when a lake has been a lake for longer than all of the people and most of the trees have been alive, many would say it’s reasonable to conclude that today, it is the natural environment. –Dave Hoopman

It’s “Safety First”
Co-ops Launch Farm Rewiring Program

A scene of tragedy became the starting point for new hope. On October 25, representatives of Wisconsin’s electric cooperatives went to a farm in Adams County—the farm where dairyman Eddie Olson lost his life to faulty wiring—to announce a new rewiring assistance program for their dairy producer members.
“Dairy farmers have a lot on their minds these days—managing and caring for their herds, making sure equipment is functioning properly, milk prices, farm financial issues, cropping concerns, you name it,” said Dave Jenkins, statewide manager of the Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association (WECA). He observed that one of the most important—but least noticed—concerns is something that for the most part is usually hidden from view: farm electrical wiring.
The wiring on a substantial number of farms was installed many years ago and in some cases has been subject to alteration by people from off the farm who were not necessarily qualified electricians. “Sound farm wiring is essential for a lot of reasons, such as energy efficiency, minimizing stray voltage, and the safety of farm families, neighbors, and livestock,” Jenkins said at the new program’s kickoff, held on the Kay Olson farm near Friendship, Wisconsin.
Braving a cold rain during an outdoor ceremony in front of the Olson barn, a group of more than 30 that included state officials, electric co-op board members and staff, farmers, and news reporters heard details of the innovative plan from sponsors.

Grants, Loans, but No State Funds

Dubbed “Safety First,” the program will include both a grant and a loan component to help farmers pay for wiring upgrades primarily to ensure electrical safety. Dairy producers may qualify for a maximum grant of $4,000 and a maximum loan of $16,000 at 5-percent interest with a five-year repayment term, according to Jenkins. The source of the funding is the general funds of the electric cooperatives; no government money will be used—a fact noted by Lieutenant Governor Margaret Farrow, who was on hand for the kickoff ceremony.
“One of my favorite bumper stickers is the one that says, ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way,’” Farrow told the crowd, commending electric co-ops for coming up with a solution that allowed state government to “get out of the way.”
Funds for the program will be limited to a first-come-first-served basis. Any dairy farmer member of a Wisconsin electric cooperative may apply. About 7,000 of the 210,000 electric co-op members in the state are dairy farmers.
Aimed primarily at the small- and medium-sized producer, the program insists that wiring must be done to code, and it does not apply to new construction since new facilities are presumed to already meet code standards. Rewiring will have to be done by qualified electricians, who will be encouraged to participate in the Wisconsin Technical College System farm-wiring course. An inspection will be done before the project starts and afterwards as well, in order to ensure the work was done properly and that the farmer got what he paid for from the contractor.

Getting the Ball Rolling

In May of this year, Dave Hansen of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and Mark Cook, manager of the Rural Electric Power Services Program of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC), met with the managers of the electric cooperatives and urged them—as they are urging all utilities—to make greater financial resources available to dairy farms for the upgrading of wiring in their operations.
Co-op managers then set to work, appointing a committee consisting of Ken Petersen, Barron Electric; Don Van Deest, Central Wisconsin Electric; Jim Hathaway, Dunn Energy; Dick Adler, Clark Electric; and Marty Hillert, Adams–Columbia Electric, to develop a plan for a statewide farm-wiring assistance program for dairy producer members of electric cooperatives. Panel members looked at the successful program operated by the Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) of Green Bay and other farm rewiring programs, which Jenkins said have already demonstrated a lower incidence of stray voltage on farms that have been rewired.
Early this fall, the board of directors of WECA and the individual boards of all 23 of Wisconsin's electric distribution cooperatives endorsed the plan devised by the managers’ committee.
The PSC and DATCP expect all utilities in Wisconsin to fashion similar programs in the near future.

Safety…and More

Although the chief goal of the program is to reduce the number of life-threatening electrical accidents, experience from existing farm wiring programs shows that a properly installed wiring upgrade can help a farmer save energy as well as control and reduce on-farm sources of stray voltage, according to Jenkins. “Coupled with an energy efficiency audit, the wiring upgrade can identify areas where electrical energy is wasted or used inefficiently,” he said. “This can mean increased profits for the producer.”
Currently, electric cooperatives are preparing application forms, program brochures, and other materials to provide to dairy farmer members so that they can learn about the program and decide whether to apply for funds to do the upgrade work.
Interested dairy producers should contact their local electric cooperative for more information on the program. Most cooperatives will be ready to start accepting applications sometime in December.