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| The Green River and Flaming Gorge reservoir, Utah, is home to several recent controversial environmental and energy initiatives. |
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The 1st installment of a continuing story
The State
of Utah's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is well
behind the pace of neighboring states, and continues but a trickle of
initiative amidst murky public messages by its governing officials. This is all
indicative of the weak advocacy of the State government to take a strong
environmental position and proceed with action steps that support "green"
energy -- steps even outlined in Energy
Initiatives and Imperatives: Utah's 10-Year Strategic Energy Plan, released
by Utah's governor's office, March of 2011. If someone were to only connect the
dots across various initiatives, the position would be quite clear. Yesterday,
it was announced Utah approved the water rights use for a proposed nuclear
power plant to locate near Green River, Utah, another major step towards
realization of that project. Major drivers for that project include the
economic development surrounding its construction and operation, but also the
move away from coal-generating plants to cleaner sources such as natural gas
and nuclear.
Clouding
the top brass' stance leading up to this point was recent news reported in The Salt Lake Tribune from last Tuesday,
January 17, 2011, with respect to a Colorado developer-proposed 500-mile water
pipeline that would deliver 200,000 acre-feet per year water from Flaming Gorge,
Utah, across Wyoming, and then south past Denver to Pueblo, Colorado.
The article states officials from Utah Division of Water Rights are analyzing
whether the Green River has enough water resource to supply the project, as
well as meet Utah's needs, such as a southern state pipeline plan to divert
water from Lake Powell to the town of St. George, or proposed needs of
additional electrical generation.
"The [Green
River] project also could supply water to eastern Wyoming, though the state has
opposed the project," reported the Tribune,
including Wyoming's Governor Matt Mead, along with Wyoming towns of Rock
Springs and Green River, as well as a Colorado coalition of nearby businesses. Utah
Governor Gary Herbert has yet to oppose the project formally, but was quoted
"'If there's not water there, we'll do everything we can to block
it,'" and continuing, "'We'll not relinquish one drop -- one molecule
-- of Utah water.'" It would seem the supply to Utah's drinking water
projects and recreational site needs could be threatened in this arid climate
where reservoir levels have been diminishing in recent years should such a
proposal advance to fruition; the precise allocation of water volumes rights
from rivers complicates the equation further, both legally and practically.
Opposition groups to the Wyco Power and Water proposal state that up to a
quarter of the river's water flow could be diverted.
The plot
thickens as Governor Herbert's pipeline message likely was for allowing the
State Engineer's to reserve that water for another controversial Green River
project: the proposed Blue Castle Nuclear Power Plant Project for a 1,700-acre
parcel four miles west of the river and town of Green River in Emery County,
Utah. This 3,000 megawatt plant is claimed could expand Utah's electricity
generation by 50% for the next 50 years, but it would require nearly 54,000
acre-feet of water to be diverted from the Green River where "none of the
water would be returned to the river," reported a November 22, 2011,
article in The Salt Lake Tribune. Blue Castle Holdings announced
yesterday (January 23, 2012) that it was granted approval for using the
existing water rights for the project, as posted by Power Engineering.
"[Blue Castle Holdings] leased
the water over four years ago from the Kane County and San Juan County Water
Conservancy Districts for the expected 60 years of plant operations. After a
review of the Districts’ applications for changing the points of diversion,
places of use, nature of use, and storage of water, Utah’s State Water Engineer
approved the 53,600 acre feet of water per year from the Green River for the
proposed nuclear electricity generation project," stated the online
magazine that focuses on the power industry.
Blue Castle
reports only a 1% diversion of the river's annual water flow for the plant. The
Salt Lake Tribune article, however, points out that this water use calculation
is based on a "normal" year, whereas in a dry year such as in 2002,
the diversion could be up to 4%. Deseret
News, in an article published October 30, 2011, reported that the Green
River's annual flow of water is 6,048 cubic feet per second, or nearly 4.4
million acre-feet. A look at the U.S. Geologic Survey's
published data, the Green River is discharging approximately 2,120 cubic feet
per second (mean). The maximum was 6,600 in 1985. For the past week, the
instantaneous discharge has been hovering around 4,000 cubic feet per second. An acre-foot is the volume of water required to cover 1
acre of land (43,560 square feet) to a depth of 1 foot and is equal to 325,851
gallons or 1,233 cubic meters. "An acre-foot is enough water to supply a
suburban family's use for a year, and the 53,600 acre-feet the Blue Castle
project intends to use is enough for about 230,000 people. So, the water the
power plant would use is enough to serve all the residents of Salt Lake City
and Draper combined," explained the November article from The Salt Lake Tribune.
A third
indicator of the inability of the current state governor's administration to
commit toward renewable projects is another Green River area energy resource:
oil shale. The Green River formation and Uintah basin contains the largest oil
shale deposits in the world -- from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, of
which 800 billion is recoverable with today's technology. This is triple the
entire proven reserve amount of Saudi Arabia, and enough to fuel the United
States' oil fuel needs for over 200 years. The hitch is that an almost equal
amount of water is required to extract and make use of the oil. For an oil shale industry producing
2.5 million barrels per day (400×10
The Union of Concerned Scientists has a wonderful document to help calculate some of the
math. For those inclined, I recommend downloading the PDF.
What will
the environmental impact of these projects be on wildlife, vegetation, our own
drinking water needs, recreation and tourism?
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