Some Dam – Hydro News

9/03/2010 SSoommee DDaamm –– HHyyddrroo NNeewwss and Other Stuff and Other Stuff i Quote of Note: “The best social program is a good job." -- Bill Clinton “Good wine is a necessity of life.” - -Thomas Jefferson Ron’s wine pick of the week: Root: 1, Colchagua Valley Chile, 2008 “No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap.” - - Thomas Jefferson Other Stuff: (Energy use down, energy efficiency down = economy down! The article forgot to mention that hydro is 2.68 Quads or almost 4 times the wind energy output! The article also conveniently forgets to mention that you need backup power for wind and that’s usually natural gas, so some of the so-called savings in coal generation is made up by natural gas generation.) Check Out the Best Energy Use Chart Ever, 2009 Edition GOOD Blog > Andrew Price on August 24, 2010, http://www.good.is/post/check-out-the-best-energy-use-chart-ever-2009- edition/ (Too enlarge chart, click and drag a corner) See larger version attached 1 Copy obtained from the National Performance of Dams Program: http://npdp.stanford.edu Every year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produces the U.S. Energy flow chart. The designers at the other end of my desk could probably improve on the color scheme, but it is still the best single chart for understanding energy use in the United States. The 2009 edition was just released. It's above, and you can get a big, legible version here. On the left you have all the primary sources for the energy we use, by percent. Flowing from left to right, the chart shows how the energy these sources create gets used. The "rejected energy," by the way, refers to energy that's lost and not used, like energy released as waste heat from a power plant. It may look like we're not using very much renewable energy, but comparing this year to last year reveals some positive trends. Total energy use fell again and coal, as a percentage of energy production sources, dropped to 19.76 percent, down from 22.42 percent last year. • Energy use in the residential, commercial, industrial and transportation arenas all declined by .22, .09, 2.16 and .88 quads, respectively. • Wind power increased dramatically in 2009 to.70 quads of primary energy compared to .51 in 2008. Most of that energy is tied directly to electricity generation and thus helps decrease the use of coal for electricity production. Another interesting thing to note here is just how much rejected energy there is. If there's room to improve the country's energy efficiency, which currently stands at an unimpressive 42.48 percent, we wouldn't have to produce nearly as much in the first place. (2nd time for this one) The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy: Achieving Energy Independence through Solar, Wind, Biomass and Hydropower (Mother Earth News Wiser Living) [Paperback], Dan Chiras (Author) Dams (Nothing like being on the wrong page. Why does an organization like Consumer Advocate Inc. think that the USBR has been asleep for 33 years???) Reclamation: Dam safety not at issue SDS critics cite a 1977 safety report; bureau says problems fixed. By CHRIS WOODKA | August 24, 2010 | chieftain.com Pueblo Dam remains safe under its current level of operation, the Bureau of Reclamation says. “The dam is checked every year by civil engineers, hydrologists and geologists, and is continuously monitored,” said Roy Vaughan, manager of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. “There are 150 points of measurable data.” Vaughan made his report to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District last week following some media reports in the past few weeks that aired concerns about the safety of Pueblo Dam. A group called Consumer Advocate Inc., run by Michael Satterfield, raised questions of the dam’s safety based on a 1977 report by W.A. Wahler. The report found safety flaws in the dam just two years after it was completed. In an open letter in the Colorado Springs Gazette earlier this month, Satterfield wrote: “It has gone on to become one of the most safety modified dams in the country. Several of the problems cannot be fixed by additional engineering. Wahler’s report states that the soil under the dam is unstable and undermines the stability of the dam itself.” The same report has been cited by Colorado Springs Councilman Tom Gallagher in his claims that Pueblo Dam cannot be operated for its designated purposes, much less for the proposed Southern Delivery System, which Gallagher opposes. Those comments brought sharp rebukes from Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera and SDS program director John Fredell. “Since the Wahler report you cited, written in 1977, the safety of dam program was officially implemented in 1978 with the passage of the Reclamation Safety of Dams Act and several technological updates have been made on Pueblo Dam,” Fredell wrote in a letter to Satterfield. Fredell goes on to say that SDS — a 50-mile pipeline serving Colorado Springs, Security, Fountain and Pueblo West — would actually lower Lake Pueblo levels by an average of 6 feet, according to the environmental impact statement prepared by the bureau. Reclamation has updated its publication, “Safe Then; Safe Now, a Summary of Pueblo Dam’s history.” It 2 Copy obtained from the National Performance of Dams Program: http://npdp.stanford.edu addresses the Wahler report, saying that two terms in the report have been “widely misused and misunderstood.” The Wahler report calls Pueblo Dam a “high hazard dam” and talks about “seepage.” Reclamation responded: • “‘High hazard dam’ is a classification term used in reference to dams located above populated areas, such as Pueblo, and does not indicate anything about a dam’s overall performance. • “‘Seepage’ describes the water that moves through all dams. Pueblo Dam has features to control and collect the seepage in a safe manner and equipment that monitors seepage through the structure.” In a 2000 updated study on the safety of dams, Reclamation concluded that 17,000 Puebloans could be at risk if Pueblo Dam were to fail. The scenario would involve a “probable maximum flood” that would be many times greater than the largest recorded flood on the Arkansas River in 1921. Since 1977, several improvements have been made on the dam, Reclamation said. In 1981, a stability berm was added to the base of the northern earthen embankment. In 1998, drain pipes were installed downstream of the north embankment to collect and monitor seepage that occurs at high water elevations. In 1998-99, Reclamation added a massive concrete “door stop” in the stilling basin and tied the foundation of Pueblo Dam into underlying rock with long metal rock bolts to prevent possible slippage of the concrete buttresses in the middle of the dam. The Reclamation report also notes that the full capacity of the dam, almost 350,000 acre- feet, is not used in order to provide flood protection for Pueblo. From April 15-Oct. 30, 93,000 acre-feet of space is available for flood control, and water levels in the dam have to be adjusted in spring if they are too high to maintain that cushion. Work starts soon to fix leaky Idaho dam August 24, 2010, spokesman.com OROFINO, Idaho — An engineering firm will begin work soon to repair leaks at north-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has hired Jacobs Engineering of Seattle to inject urethane in joints between some of the huge concrete blocks that make up the dam. The Lewiston Tribune reports that water stops between six of the 51 concrete monoliths that make up the dam are leaking badly. Engineers say the leaks don’t threaten the structural integrity of the dam, but they do make it more difficult for officials to monitor water slipping beneath the structure. Water leaking under a dam can cause tremendous uplift pressure that can, in extreme cases, undermine the safety of the structure. The engineering firm will start with just two of the leaky water stops. If the fix is successful, corps officials will seek funding to inject urethane into other leaking joints. Cash for the $1.3 million job comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “This is a world-class engineering effort. This is the first time in the world we know of this material has been used on a high-head dam,” said Allan Pomraning, dam safety project manager for the Walla Walla District. Work will begin in September, Pomraning said. “The whole idea is to get the worst of the worst,” he said. The urethane works by soaking up water and then expanding to seal the joints. The expansion process takes about a month. The corps is also working on a $1.9 million project to install additional instruments at the dam to measure uplift pressure and stress on cracks in the concrete. That money also comes from the federal stimulus package. Both contracts are part of the risk reduction measures outlined by the corps two years ago when it released a dam safety assessment for Dworshak. That assessment rated Dworshak a 2 on a scale of 1 to 4. A 2 classification indicates the dam is “unsafe or potentially unsafe.” Still, corps officials say despite the rating Dworshak Dam is safe, and that it received the low score not because there is a real threat of failure but because if it were to fail, the loss of human life and property would be high. (The END!) Contract to remove Elwha dams goes to Montana firm The National Park Service has signed a $27 million contract with a Bozeman, Mont., company to take out the two dams on the Elwha River in the largest dam-removal project in U.S.

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