🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3426E179.7640@awwwsome.com>,
David B. Green <barclay@awwwsome.com> wrote:

[...]

>Hydro projects that are specifically energy generating and not also
>flood control or water supply projects have many fewer problems than the
>large dams that are all three.  Hydro projects that basically divert a
>small (or large) portion of a stream or river without creating storage
>don't have the siltation problems and in many cases the fish blockages
>that the large storage dams have.
>It is a clean but very limited source of energy since not many rivers
>are being built.

Unfortunately, a dam is a very expensive thing to build, and the utilities
generally try to get the feds to build the dam based on some benefit-cost
ratio involving the benefit of recreation and flood control.

Of course small side streams and canyons can be used, but beaucoup megawatts
requires a bodacious dam. And even a small generating station requires
water storage, so siltation is always a concern.

Not to mention that it is the small tributaries that the fish are headed for
to spawn, and the small dam is just as much a problem as the big dams.


-- 
    *********** DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@wco.com) ************
    *                Daly City California:                *
    *       where San Francisco meets The Peninsula       *
    ******* and the San Andreas Fault meets the Sea *******