Dam removal fund suggested.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

A coalition of environmental groups has recommended that EWEB set up a dam-decommissioning fund to help pay for the "obvious eventuality" when three dams on the upper McKenzie River are removed in the interests of protecting threatened fish runs.

The recommendation is part of the groups' response to the Eugene Water & Electric Board's draft application for a new federal license to continue operating the Carmen-Smith Hydroelectric Project just below the McKenzie's headwaters at Clear Lake. EWEB's license expires in November 2008.

"We're talking about EWEB building a war chest for the time when they're going to have to remove (those dams), so that it doesn't shock ratepayers," said Rebecca Sherman, Northwest coordinator for the Hydropower Reform Coalition. "We don't want them making decisions based on fears of a huge rate hit."

Groups endorsing the decommissioning fund proposal include American Whitewater, Pacific Rivers Council, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Trout Unlimited and Oregon Natural Resources Council.

EWEB, however, has never considered setting up such a fund and views its projects on the upper McKenzie as viable into the indefinite future, spokesman Marty Douglass said.

"We would not be going through the process we're going through, and ready to open our checkbook to perhaps the tune of $100 million, if we thought that was the eventual outcome," Douglass said.

The utility is looking at spending that much money or more to win a new 30- to 50-year operational license, with most of the money dedicated to a new fish ladder for upstream-bound fish and a screened underwater passage for fish heading downstream at Trail Bridge Dam.

The improvements could reunite spring chinook salmon and bull trout from below and above the dam, greatly improving the outlook for the two threatened species.

One of EWEB's concerns is how to construct a screened passageway, which could require nearly draining Trail Bridge Reservoir, without jeopardizing the lives of the fish already there. The utility also is looking at a trap-and-haul alternative to a fish ladder for upstream-moving fish.

Trail Bridge is the final link in the Carmen-Smith project, which consists of three dams and reservoirs, two large water tunnels and a pair of power plants about 70 miles upriver from Eugene. The project produces 120 megawatts of power. Coupled with the 23 megawatts produced downstream at Leaburg-Walterville, the rivers' dams account for about 11 percent of EWEB's power supply.

So far, only 17 hydroelectric projects have been decommissioned by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission out of more than 1,600 nationwide. The decommissioned dams are relatively old and small; the biggest, Portland General Electric's Bull Run project on the Sandy River, was completed in 1913 and produces 22 megawatts - not quite matching Leaburg-Walterville's output.

Rather than seek a new federal license, PGE decided to remove Bull Run's two dams and Roslyn Lake, a man-made reservoir, at a cost of $17 million. The decommissioning is to begin next year.

Other dams slated for decommissioning include the Powerdale Dam on Oregon's Hood River, and dams on the White Salmon and Elwha rivers in Washington, Bear River in Idaho and Clark Fork River in Montana.

The Carmen-Smith project dams are 43 years old. Sherman stressed that the environmental coalition isn't calling for their immediate decommissioning, only the creation of a fund to help ease a later decision.

"Dams are infrastructures with (limited) life spans," she said. "There's going to come a time when they're not as safe as they used to be."

The coalition suggests that FERC may wish to require EWEB to create a decommissioning fund as part of its relicensing conditions. Decommissioning might make sense when a new license expires in 30 to 50 years, if not sooner, the group said.

A decommissioning fund "will serve as insurance for EWEB and its constituents, and will allow removal decisions to be rooted in environmental and practical needs and not in financial avoidance," the coalition said in its written comments. "EWEB should prepare now for a time when the upper McKenzie River will run free again."

Neither the coalition nor EWEB has sought to put a dollar figure on what decommissioning and possible removal of the dams might cost.

Among other proposals, the environmental groups advocate fish passageways at Trail Bridge, and possibly at Carmen and Smith as well. They also challenge EWEB's proposal to reduce the amount of spill over Carmen Dam during most months, saying the result would be the drying-out of popular Tamolitch Falls.

EWEB officials plan to meet with various parties - including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - later this month in hopes of hammering out a compromise proposal. EWEB must submit its final license application in November.