Dry year intensifying region's power crunch

Steve Ernst It's shaping up to be the second-driest year on record in the Northwest, but with a little more bad luck 2001 could become the thirstiest year in the region's 61 years of record-keeping.

Due to the lack of snow this winter, the region's rivers aren't going to produce megawatts at their usual rate. The melting snowpack in the Cascade Mountains is the main force behind the region's river flows, and without it the Northwest's hydrosystem will be roughly 5,000 megawatts below normal, the Northwest Power Planning Council reported last week.

Regional snowpack runoff predications have improved only slightly in the last month thanks to a barrage of spring snow storms in the Cascades. Runoff is now expected at 57 million acre feet, measured at the Dalles Dam. That compares to 54 million acre feet in 1977, the driest year since regional records have been kept. Normal runoff is about 102 million acre feet.

"If we get lucky and get 125 percent of normal precipitation through July, we could get to 62 million acre feet," said Dick Watson, director of the Northwest Power Planning Council, an agency created by the states of Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon to protect fish while assuring that the Northwest will continue to have reliable and adequate hydroelectric power.

"If we aren't lucky and we get only 75 percent of normal, then we are looking at just under 53 million acre feet - the driest ever," Watson said.

That spells bad news for young salmon and steelhead.

The council has already recommended extending emergency river operation procedures that curtail water spilled over the dams. Reducing the spills - which help juvenile salmon and steelhead migrate to the ocean - will create more hydropower this summer and keep reservoirs at higher levels to address potential shortages next winter.

Extending the emergency operations at dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers has irked a coalition of fishing and conservation groups that have already given notice they intend to file a series of lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act unless federal agencies change their water ways.

The coalition, which includes Trout Unlimited, Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Idaho Rivers Unlimited, plan to sue the U.S

Bureau of Reclamation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They have also sent a warning letter to the

National Marine Fisheries Service, calling NMFS' perceived inaction to protect the fish "inexcusable."

Conservation and fishing groups have proposed a river operation plan that they claim would put more water into the rivers, both helping the fish and generating megawatts.

"We've made recommendations for ways to get more water in the river both for salmon and for power," said Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited. "However, the agencies have continued to ignore these operations and instead have relied on pitting salmon against power. In failing to consider all options available, the agencies are failing to meet obligations required under federal statute."

The lack of water has created a 5,000 megawatt power shortage in the area, but some help may be on the way.

More than 1,100 megawatts of new generating facilities will begin producing power by July, the council reports.

And an additional 700 megawatts will up and running by the end of the year. In 2002, some 1,700 more megawatts of new generation is expected to begin operating in the Northwest.

Last week, Gov. Gary Locke extended the state's energy supply alert for 60 days allowing the state's newly acquired fleet of diesel generators to keep running.

Since the alert was declared in January, an estimated 320 megawatts of diesel capacity have been installed around the state.

In addition the Northwest Power Planning Council reports that heavy industrial users of electricity are reducing their demand for power by about 1,000 megawatts - or enough juice to power Seattle.

Utilities around the state have also arranged an additional 800 to 900 megawatts of demand reduction agreements from their industrial users.

Reach Steve Ernst at 206-447-8505 ext. 114 or sernst@bizjournals.com.

http://seattle.bcentral.com/seattle/stories/2001/05/07/newscolumn6.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 07, 2001