Dept. of Energy Report - Dam Every River for Hydropower
Posted: 05/05/2014
By: Megan Hooker
Last week Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that the U.S. has the potential to add more
than 65.5 GW of new hydropower to the nation's energy portfolio by 2030. Meeting this goal
would require damming over 3 million river and stream reaches across the country, including
treasured rivers like the Penobscot River in Maine, the Tuckaseegee River in North Carolina, and
the Smith River in California. Moniz's comments came as
the Energy Department released a report entitled New Stream-reach
Development: A Comprehensive Assessment of Hydropower Energy Potential in the United States.
If fully developed, these hydropower projects would destroy over 1,700 whitewater runs
across the country including:
- - Middlebury, Mongaup and Deerfield Rivers, and Forks of the Penobscot in New England;
- - Tuckasegee, Watauga and Daddy's Creek in the Southeast;
- - Gooney Run and Maury in Virginia;
- - Madison, Smith and Yellowstone Rivers in the Northern Rockies;
- - Arkansas in Colorado;
- - Wenatchee and Clackamas Rivers in the Pacific Northwest;
- - Smith, Feather, and Forks of the American in California.
These whitewater gems, and so many more targeted within the report, are the backbone of local and
regional recreation economies across the country. Damming a river like the Arkansas in Colorado
would devastate the economically vital rafting industry for the area.
Hydropower
developers are heeding the report as a rallying cry to meet the 65.5 GW goal by 2030, and
the Energy Department's list doesn't leave anything out. It includes
rivers where millions of dollars have been invested by federal, state and local governments and
local communities to remove dams, including the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers in Maine and the
Rogue River in Oregon. It also includes reaches that are protected from hydropower development by
policies and programs that were established specifically to counterbalance the negative impacts
of our nation's history of rampantly building well over 80,000 dams. In its
announcement, the Energy Department declared that hydropower is "clean" and
"sustainable," which ignores our vast understanding
of just how destructive hydropower is to rivers and the habitat, recreation, water
quality and aesthetic values they hold.
The report notes that hydropower production could increase above the 65.5 GW goal if potential
hydropower projects within National Parks and Wilderness Areas are developed–including
Yosemite Creek in Yosemite National Park and several rivers in Olympic National Park–and on
Wild and Scenic Rivers like the Chetco and John Day in Oregon, the Chattooga in the Southeast,
and the Middle Fork Flathead in Montana. The list even includes some of the original Wild and
Scenic Rivers, like the Lochsa in Idaho and the Middle Fork Feather in California.
Building hydropower on rivers within National Parks and Wilderness Areas, and on rivers that
are designated as Wild and Scenic, is illegal. While the report acknowledges that "not all
areas identified…will be practical or feasible to develop for various reasons," it
still contains these protected river reaches as potential sites for new hydropower.
"Creating a master list of all potential hydropower sites and including Wild and Scenic
Rivers and reaches in National Parks and Wilderness Areas but then saying they are off-limits
is like publishing a cookbook for endangered animals and plants, but then telling people that
every recipe might not be worth the effort to go hunting or foraging," said Kevin Colburn,
National Stewardship Director.
The Energy Department states that this report builds on the commitment to President Obama's
"all-of-the-above" energy strategy, however American Whitewater strongly
disagrees that "dam every river" is an appropriate vision. "Damming
every potential river for hydropower makes as much sense as it would to cover every available
piece of land with solar panels," said California Stewardship Director Dave Steindorf.
"The goal of reaching 65.5 GW is not feasible, and it does not reflect the value that the
public places on protecting rivers for recreation, water quality, and habitat." While
hydropower makes up seven percent of total U.S. electricity generation, in the continuous U.S.,
less than two percent of all rivers remain freely-flowing and relatively undeveloped. Damming
the last freely-flowing rivers is not the answer to the nation's question of how to develop
a more sustainable and carbon-neutral energy future. "This list and report are a
distraction from the real energy challenges and opportunities we face," Colburn
said.
As the Energy Department affirms its intent to work with hydropower developers to advance
hydropower, American Whitewater affirms ours to protect our remaining freely flowing rivers
from uneconomical hydropower projects that harm recreation opportunities, critical habitat and
water quality. We understand the important role that hydropower plays in our energy portfolio,
and we already work to improve efficiencies at existing hydropower facilities. A 2012 Energy
Department assessment also found that there is potential to increase hydropower production by
12 GW at existing dams that currently do not have hydropower capabilities. These possibilities
should be explored before new hydropower is considered.
You can view the full report through the National Hydropower Asset Assessment Program.