2465. Hydropower Is Dirty Energy

By Gary Wockner, EcoWatch, September 30, 2016

TheItaipu Hydroelectricity Power Plant on the Brazil  is the second largest power plant in the world with 20 generator units and 14,250 MW of capacity.

TheItaipu Hydroelectricity Power Plant on the Brazil  is the second largest power plant in the world with 20 generator units and 14,250 MW of capacity.

Over the last two years, I've written four articles about the massive problem with methane emissions from hydropower dams and reservoirs. Finally, the mainstream media covered this story Thursday after an international team of scientists released a new study that synthesizes more than 100 scholarly articles on the topic.

The Seattle Times headline read, "Hydropower Isn't Carbon Neutral After All" and the Washington Post headline read, "Oh Great—Scientists Have Confirmed A Key New Source Of Greenhouse Gases”

The scientific study featured in these news articles will appear next week in the journal Bioscience and is co-authored by 10 international researchers including scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As reported in the Seattle Times and Washington Post, key findings in the scientific study include:

 • Methane emissions from dams and reservoirs across the planet, including hydropower, are estimated to be significantly larger than previously thought, approximately equal to 1 gigaton per year.

 • The international boom in the construction of hydropower projects is rapidly accelerating this increase in methane emissions.

 • Reservoirs in mid-latitude areas of the planet, including in the U.S., can have as high of methane emissions as those in tropical countries which have been measured to emit as much greenhouse gases as coal-fired power plants.

 • The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should now better account for these massive methane emissions and include them in climate change scenarios.

In the four articles I wrote:

 1 Why Hydropower Is Not Clean Or Cheap

 2 Hydropower Will Undermine COP21 As False Solution To Climate Change

 3 The Hydropower Methane Bomb No One Wants To Talk About

 4 Dams Cause Climate Change, They Are Not Clean Energy

I laid out the science behind why dams and reservoirs cause methane emissions. I explained how there are hundreds of dams under construction right now and thousands in the planning process, and I described how the U.S. government and the IPCC need to address this issue because countries around the world are sweeping it under the rug.

Inspiring news & a great example of what a few people can accomplish w/ dedication.

Now I'm taking it a step farther. I'm calling for a global moratorium on the construction and permitting of all hydropower projects.

Hydropower is being pushed forward as "clean" and "carbon free" by an industry that is making hundreds of billions of dollars per year building dams. Countries, including the U.S., are in denial about how hydropower is contributing to climate change. Corruption in developing countries is undermining democracy and endangering the lives of local people who are fighting these projects. The murder of dam-fighter Berta Cáceres in Honduras got widespread international attention, but it is only the tip of the iceberg for the human rights abuses faced by local people fighting hydropower across the planet.

A moratorium on hydropower is the only just path forward.

2267. Removal of 4 Dams to Reopen 420 Miles of Historic Salmon Habitat on Klamath River

By Emily J. Gertz, Takepart, April 6, 2016

Southern Oregon's John C. Boyle Dam is one of four Klamath River dams that will be removed by 2020. (Photo: Bob J. Galindo/Wikipedia)

It’s been 115 years since the first of six dams began regulating flows on the Klamath River, which runs from the high desert of eastern Oregon to the northern California coast.

By 2020 most of them will be gone—and the river’s once-abundant salmon runs hopefully on the rebound—if two new agreements between tribal, state and federal governments, the operator and other stakeholders work out as planned.

On Wednesday, standing before the mouth of the Klamath River on the Yurok Reservation in California, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that the federal departments of the interior and commerce, along with the states of Oregon and California and the Karuk and Yurok tribes, have signed a new agreement with electric power company PacifiCorp to decommission and remove four hydropower dams along the Klamath River.

The agreement creates a “path forward for the largest river restoration in the history of the United States,” along with “the largest dam removal project in the history of our nation,” Jewell said.

The new pact will allow PacifiCorp to take three dams in California—Copco 1, Copco 2 and the Iron Gate Dam—and the John C. Boyle Dam in Oregon out of service by using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s established licensing process for hydropower.

PacifiCorp’s license to operate the dams expired in 2006. An earlier agreement to authorize their removal, created in 2010, required Congressional approval and expired at the end of 2015 after Congress adjourned without enacting it.

“From the company’s point of view, we have the same agreement [today] that we negotiated since 2008,” said Bob Gravely, a spokesperson for PacifiCorp. “This is simply a way to continue pursuing it without needing involvement from Congress.”

The second agreement commits the state and federal governments to assisting farmers and ranchers in the river’s upper basin with the likely financial and regulatory impacts of returning fish runs, which will need to be protected from irrigation infrastructure.

While the Klamath River’s runs of spring and fall Chinook salmon have not been formally declared endangered, they have been faltering for years. And since 1997, the Klamath River run of coho salmon has been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Southern Oregon’s John C. Boyle Dam is one of four Klamath River dams that will be removed by 2020. Photo credit: Bob J. Galindo / Wikipedia

This year’s salmon runs are expected to hit historic lows, as drought and the impacts of climate change intensify the effects of poor river conditions created by the dams.

“By removing dams we’re reopening hundreds of miles of spawning habitat and dramatically improving water quality,” said Craig Tucker, natural resources policy advocate for the 4,000-member Karuk Tribe of California, which has signed on to the new agreement. “The Karuk, and the Yurok and other people in this basin are salmon people. Their cultures, their economies, their religion, all rely upon the return of the salmon.”

The removal of the four dams will be the necessary first step in restoring the river’s fish habitat, Tucker said, but much more will need to be done, including restoration of marshes and other wetlands in the upper basin.

Lack of salmon has led many Karuk to consume a more Western diet, Tucker said, leading to rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity in the tribe that outpace national averages. “Historically, research shows that Karuk consumed 1.2 pounds of salmon per person per day. Now we’re lucky if each person gets four pounds a year,” he said.

The absence of the salmon has also harmed the tribe’s religious practices, including one ceremony tied to the arrival of the first spring Chinook. “The spring salmon is probably the most at-risk run of salmon in the river,” Tucker said. “You can’t have that ceremony without salmon.”

Hosts of other important ceremonies traditionally “feed everyone with salmon who comes and if there are no fish, they can’t meet that obligation,” Tucker added. “It would be like if the Pope didn’t have enough wine and crackers for mass.”

“We see removal of these dams as the single biggest act of restoration that can be carried out on the Klamath,” Tucker said. “I would assert that it’s the biggest salmon restoration project in U.S. history.”

2184. Hydropower Dams Threaten One-Third of the World’s Freshwater Fish

By Eisabeth Grossman, Earth Island Journal, January 7, 2016 

Accordimg to the forthcoming Science article the Belo Monte Belo dam may set a record for biodiversity loss because
of the site that is homes to an exceptional number of endemic species. 

Three of the world’s most important tropical river basins — the Amazon, the Congo and the Mekong — are experiencing an unprecedented boom in the construction of hydropower dams. According to a paper by more than three dozen scientists from universities, research institutions and conservation organizations around the world, which will be pubished tomorrow in Science magazine, these projects pose a major threat to biodiversity, including to one-third of all the world’s freshwater fish species. The authors say long-term impacts of tropical hydropower projects are rarely assessed adequately and call for better — and more transparent — planning that more accurately evaluates the full costs of these dams. Without this, the authors write, these projects will lead to species extinctions, as well as significant declines in fisheries and other “ecosystem services” on the world’s “mega-diverse” tropical rivers.

While most of the 838 existing dams on these river systems are relatively small, more than 450 new dams are currently planned for the Amazon, Congo and Mekong Rivers — about 75 percent of these in the Amazon. The paper’s authors contend that those planning the dams “have generally failed to assess the true benefits and costs of large hydropower projects,” leading both to financial cost overruns and underestimation of environmental and social costs. Those costs can be high — the dams take a toll on biodiversity, and damage to fish populations can threaten food security in local communities that depend on the fisheries.

As the paper’s lead author, Kirk Winemiller, Regents Professor in Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences & Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, explained via email, these three tropical river basins “contain a disproportionate amount of the world’s freshwater biodiversity, including about one third of all freshwater fish species.” Further, said Winemiller, many of these rivers' “sub-basins and tributaries contain unique species found nowhere else.”

For example, the Xingu River in Brazil, which is a major tributary of the Amazon, includes a complex of rapids that Winemiller says “provides habitat for about four dozen fish species found nowhere else on earth.” The paper notes that altogether, there are nearly 1,500 endemic species found in the Amazon Basin. 

According to the paper, Brazil’s massive Belo Monte dam, which is due to be completed this year, “may set a record for biodiversity loss” owing to its siting at a location with an exceptional number of endemic species. “This controversial project is nearing completion and will radically change the river, its ecology, and the lives of local people, especially indigenous communities that have depended on the river’s ecosystem services,” said Winemiller. At least 334 new Amazon dams have been proposed in addition to those already operating and under construction.ozens of other endemic fish species.

In the Mekong River Basin, which is already heavily dammed with some 370 dams, there are plans for almost 100 more, including nearly a dozen dams on the river’s main stem. The Lower Mekong River currently supports important inland fisheries, recently estimated to be worth about $17 billion a year. The dam building planned for the Mekong will disrupt the movement of the river’s migratory fish — blocking their ability to move between their wet and dry season, and spawning and nursery, habitats. The dams will also disrupt livelihoods. More than 3 million people living in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are directly involved in these fisheries, said Winemiller. Many more of the 60 million people who live in the Mekong River Basin depend on the river in other ways as well.

It is well known that dams block fish passage and disrupt river hydrology, which in turn upsets rivers’ ecological balance and the ability of fish and other aquatic species to access floodplain and nursery habitats. But the full measure of these impacts throughout a river basin are usually poorly accounted for by those building dams, say the paper’s authors.

“We have a lot of evidence on specific projects but there have been few global assessments or large scale assessments like this article on three large river basins,” International Rivers interim executive director Peter Bosshard told Earth Island Journal.

As Bosshard explained, “There isn’t a lot of money for scientific research on these issues,” and such research — including environmental assessments — needs to be done before full dam construction begins, but that often doesn’t happen. In many cases, he said, “millions, sometimes scores of millions of dollars have been spent” and a “river may already have been diverted,” before an assessment is completed. “By that time it’s almost impossible to stop a project.” He also pointed out that on many of these projects, assessments are not done by an independent third-party but by companies hired by those building the dams.

The World Bank, which helps finance many dam building projects worldwide, was not able to comment on the not-yet-published paper but offered a summary of a 2014 World Bank report on hydropower. It says that “Hydropower production is the least-cost method of providing electricity in many developing countries” that in some places may alleviate local poverty and improve food security. However, it says, hydropower “can also carry significant risks” — challenges that have become more pressing in the last decade. 

The Science paper authors think that assessment of those risks is often lacking when it comes to project approval and financing. “Institutions that permit and finance hydropower development should require basin-scale analyses that account for cumulative impacts,” including climate change, they write. Such evaluations and subsequent changes to dam siting are “imperative,” they say. Without this, there will be significant species loss and, they note, “We are skeptical, that rural communities in the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong basins will experience benefits of energy supply and job creation that exceed costs of lost fisheries, agriculture, and property.”