Proposed Bear Lake Hydroelectric Plant May Harm Native Fish
Mar 25, 2008 by Eric Ray
(KCPW News) A proposed hydroelectric plant at Utah's Bear Lake would generate 1100 megawatts of power for use along the Wasatch Front. However a biologist from the Division of Wildlife Resources is concerned about the potential effects on the lake's four native fish species."Bear Lake is a really unique resource. We don't have populations of these fish anywhere else," says Scott Tolentino, a Bear Lake fisheries project biologist. "We are unsure of what kind of impact the project would have to them. It has the potential to change things out in the lake. Once we change things there is the possibility the fish will never come back."
Tolentino says it will be left up to Symbiotics LLC, the company applying to build the hydroelectric plant, to prove the project won't harm the fish. Eric Steimle, Director of Environmental Compliance for Symbiotics, says his company is performing studies to determine the environmental impact of the proposal.
"There's definitely an environmental price that would be too high to pay," says Steimle. "We completely agree that Bear Lake is a very unique resource. Too often natural resources have paid the price for economic development. However current environmental protections required as part of FERC's process prohibit any new hydroelectric development that degrades water quality or imperils sensitive species."
The proposed plant would be built east of Bear Lake in Hook Canyon. The project would include a new 15,000 acre feet reservoir and a new dam. It would pump water from Bear Lake in the evening hours and re-release it into the lake during hours of peak demand. If completed, the target completion date would be in 2014.
To hear more about the proposal, and its possible environmental effects, download a podcast of today's Midday Metro.
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2008 KCPW
1. Chuck Schamel said:
The proposed plant on the east side of bear lake IS NOT a hydroelectric generating plant. It is an electric storage system. It WILL NOT make any new electric power. It will simply use power from off-peak time (night) that is generated by other sources, then return that power at peak usage time (mid-afternoon).
2. Casey Florence said:
Chuck is right, the proposed plant will not generate power and what makes it worse is it will NOT return an equal amount from storage. It takes more power to pump the water to store than it can return or "generate" as the owners want to call it. Also the off-peak power will be from coal fired plants and it won't be surplus power for the amount required to run the pumps. This idea is a simple accounting scheme to buy cheap off-peak power and sell the inefficient "retuned" power at inflated prices to the highest bidders, and that won't be in Utah!