Fall Creek Energy Rights Attract Interest
By Jeff Wright, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.
Dec. 1–LOWELL — A private company based in Utah and the local Emerald People’s Utility District are vying for the right to produce hydroelectricity at Fall Creek Dam.
The dam is among several in the area owned by the federal government and used for flood control and recreation, not power generation. While adding hydro capacity to such dams may have once been impractical, new realities — including rising energy costs, more demand, purchase restrictions with the Bonneville Power Administration and state requirements to reach certain renewable energy goals, have changed the landscape.
“Someone will develop that dam,” said Richard Jackson-Gistelli, power resource manager at EPUD. “We think we can do it with minimal impact.”
Competing for the right to develop hydro at Fall Creek is Symbiotics LLC, a private firm that has applied for hydro permits on dozens of smaller U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams across the West. In Oregon, Symbiotics is closest to adding hydro to Dorena Dam east of Cottage Grove and to Applegate Dam in Jackson County.
Local residents can weigh in at a public hearing in Lowell on Wednesday, though the meeting is related strictly to Symbiotics’ proposal for Fall Creek, not EPUD’s. Separate hearings on EPUD’s proposal will come later as the utility moves through the application process.
The competing proposals are roughly similar, envisioning a power-house with three turbines that could generate a capacity of 10 megawatts. The projects envision one or more sluices that would direct existing water flows to the turbines, and a short transmission line from the powerhouse to an existing line at the base of the dam.
Neither Symbiotics nor EPUD currently has a valid preliminary permit, much less a license, to build a hydro project at Fall Creek. Mary Grainey, hydroelectric program coordinator for the state Water Resources Department, said the parties still have to answer to fish and other environmental concerns.
“It’s fairly easy to get a preliminary permit, but that’s no guarantee that (an application) will be approved in the future,” she said.
Though EPUD’s application was filed later and was made possible only because Symbiotics let an earlier approved permit lapse, the utility might have the upper hand. That’s because federal law says that if two competing proposals between public and private parties are roughly equivalent, the government must give priority to the public agency.
EPUD estimates adding hydro to Fall Creek could cost between $14 million and $25 million, and would most likely be operational no sooner than 2017. The utility’s board in August approved an initial $40,000 for its preliminary application.
EPUD currently owns no hydro of its own, buying its electricity from Bonneville. The utility, which serves 555 acres of rural Lane County in a patchwork “doughnut” surrounding Eugene-Springfield, signed a recent contract for wind power, and buys some gas from the Short Mountain landfill.
Like other small utility districts, EPUD will no longer be ensured the cheapest rate for Bonneville power beginning in 2011, Jackson-Gistelli said. Combine that with a growing load demand and a requirement to increase its renewable energy portfolio, and EPUD decided it needed to actively pursue new energy sources, he said.
“We don’t want to wait,” he said. “We want to be ahead of the curve.”
EPUD is interested in owning, but not building, a dam at Fall Creek, Jackson-Gistelli said. It’s possible, he said, that an agreement could be reached in which Symbiotics would construct and operate a hydro facility and EPUD would own it, making the power available to its customers.
Hydro at Fall Creek would most likely provide only 3 percent to 4 percent of EPUD’s load demands, Jackson-Gistelli said. But, “it pencils out with (projected) market prices,” he said.
Erik Steimle, Symbiotics’ director of environmental compliance in Portland, said the private company is working closely with EPUD but remains interested in pursuing ownership of hydro at Fall Creek. Prospective customers of hydro produced by Symbiotics could include EPUD and PacifiCorp, Steimle said.
Symbiotics has made greater progress at Dorena, where it hopes to begin building a two-turbine plant with eight-megawatt capacity in 2009, Steimle said. While further along in the complicated licensing process, Dorena still requires a water quality certification from the state Department of Environmental Quality and final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
was formed in the winter of 2001, after the California energy crisis that shot West Coast open market power rates into the stratosphere. The company’s principals are based in Utah and Idaho.
State and federal fish agencies have requested studies to assess whether hydro could be added at Fall Creek without causing more damage to aquatic life.
Fall Creek and Fall Creek Lake are home to a variety of species of fish, including some officially listed as endangered (Oregon chub) or threatened (Willamette spring chinook).
Symbiotics and EPUD both contend they could make upgrades that would actually improve the quality of fish stock at Fall Creek.
Jeff Ziller, district fish biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, said the state agency wants to ensure that juvenile salmonid heading downstream can successfully pass the dam. Even without power turbines, the dam has resulted in a high mortality rate for fish struggling to cope with increased water flows, he said.
Ziller said it’s possible that a hydro project could actually improve survival rates at Fall Creek if a fish screen and other improvements were included.
Many larger Army Corps of Engineers dams in the Willamette Valley, including Lookout Point and Hills Creek, already have hydro power, which is added to the Bonneville grid.
Tim Kuhn, project coordinator for the Corps of Engineers, said the agency is neutral about hydro development on its smaller dams, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the dams’ initial purposes.
The Fall Creek applicants “are still in the early process of evaluating things, and have a lot of work to do,” Kuhn said. “And we’ve got a lot to learn, because we don’t know a lot of specifics about their proposals yet.”
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