I have been railing on hydropower now for some time, and in Colorado, its about to get a whole lot more important real quick.
There is currently a bill in the statehouse that defines what ‘low-impact hydropower’ is. Some believe that putting a wattage limit on the dam or diversion (say, under 10Megawatts) makes it Low Impact. But does a fish know that? Does the dammed river and altered ecosystem of that river know that? Only humans and their tax schemes know that.
Take a quick look at this video – its only about a minute long. It is a recent AMEX commercial featuring Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and lifelong crusader for wild places.
In the middle of the commercial, notice that the subject switches to a dam that he has been trying to get removed for years. Now, if you look at that dam, you notice that its not that tall, and there is not all that much water going over it. In Colorado (under these new rules) that would likely be classified as low-impact – there is no way that thing would generate 10Mw.
But look at it more closely – it is a concrete wall. There is no migration for species, and upstream in the four-foot deep pond, the ecosystem is radically altered, not to mention the warm water sitting below it (water running over the dam warms, changing the system downstream).
Is this what we want our streams in Colorado to look like? Do we want this as an acceptable COST to having a few kilowatts or megawatts of generation? Its our choice, here…if it were your favorite stream, or your home, how would you feel?
Rivers and streams are the arteries and capillaries of life in the natural world. We can’t go around cutting them off and expect to have a healthy ecosystem.
